Human Services (Cohort) Degree

This course provides the foundation for the personal and conceptual skills requisite assuming the role of an effective Human and Social Services Administrator. Skills, including time and stress management, oral and written communication, as well as the management of one's power and influence in organizations are covered. The frameworks of legislation, policy, and human resource and client relations are also examined and discussed.

This course examines best practices surrounding written communication strategies for the Human Services administrator. The course will empower students with effective and efficient communication skills. This course will focus on client reports, psychosocial histories, evaluations, professional papers, research reports, papers for mass audiences, requests for funding, letters to the editor, the use of the Internet in helping clients, presentations, and the privacy rules of HIPAA, along with an emphasis on the rules and application of APA Style.

This course is designed especially for students interested in human services administration. The course addresses cultural, social, religious and economic factors applicable to ethnic and minority populations, from both the perspective of the culturally diverse client and the administrator. Experiential and reflective methods of learning will be emphasized, as well as gaining insight into the manner in which one's own values influence one's interactions with others. This course emphasizes the organizations' as well as the administrators' roles in administering programs that embrace the social and cultural diversity within organizations that serve the community.

This course examines theoretical and practical ethical standards for management in a variety of human service settings. Students assess their own values and professionalism and prepare for future professional growth. They develop a personal/professional framework for ethical decision making after studying a range of different models. Also emphasized is knowledge of relevant ethical codes in the human services.

This course emphasizes helping students develop an understanding of program administration and practice within the context of community. Specific attention is given to the assessment of community assets and needs and to the active engagement of community members in the pursuit of mutually beneficial goals (volunteerism, community presence, social networking with a community, connections between diverse social service and community organizations, and so on).

This course examines the importance of ensuring sustainable funding as a necessary skill for administrators of human service organizations. This course presents a number of ways to ensure funding from public and private sources. Areas of emphasis include researching public policy, industry trends, and grant writing that incorporates legal and ethical considerations. This course includes the completion of a brief grant proposal.

This course focuses on nonprofit administrative theories, principles, and required knowledge and skills. The course includes research and analysis of financial, human resources and project management constructs in nonprofit/human services (NP/HS) administration. Compliance with federal, state, and local regulations is incorporated.

This course will provide knowledge, ethics and values, and skills involved in organizational leadership for human service. The focus is on the theoretical perspectives, organizational functions and structures, leadership styles, techniques and skills, and ethical and value-driven leadership needed by those who seek to specialize in human services agency administration. Students who successfully complete this course should possess effective organizational leadership competence for working with diverse and multicultural personnel and clients as well as working with vulnerable, oppressed and disenfranchised populations.

This course introduces students to the theories of career development, as well as the assessment tools and practices associated with helping employees achieve congruence in their career development pattern. Students explore interrelationships among such factors as age, gender, family, life roles, and multicultural issues, as they relate to career and educational planning. Topics within the context of an organization are also emphasized: succession planning; early-, mid-, and late-career, professional development; and the active promotion of connections between strategic planning, employee motivation and performance, and skill development .This class also focuses on worker motivation and resource development.