Meet David Becerra the New Divisional Dean of Social Work Part I

James Sherpa: Next on BroncoTales. 

David Becerra: Like you said, integrating all of these things together so that students have a different skill set. They can shift into these different roles because one of the great things about an MSW degree is that it’s so flexible. You can do so many different things with an MSW degree. 

Jacoba Rock: My name is Jacoba Rock, and I’m a clinical faculty member at Boise State School of Social Work. The focus of my practice and research is on social work and criminal legal settings. I’m grateful to be the host of today’s College of Health Sciences BroncoTales podcast with our school’s new divisional dean, Dr. David Becerra. 

Dr. Becerra begins his new role this summer, 2023, leading the School of Social Work’s degree programs, faculty, and staff. Today’s podcast episode will introduce Dr. Becerra to the Boise State community as an opportunity for us to learn about his interests and goals in his new position. We will talk about contemporary social work and social work education, as well as Dr. Becerra’s specific goal of improving access and opportunities for students and communities.

This is BroncoTales with the College of Health Sciences. Alright, can you tell us some about where you’re from and how you became a social worker? 

David Becerra: I am originally from San Diego, California, which is a city that borders Tijuana, Mexico. So it’s literally the last city that you, in the United States, before you cross into Mexico. I was born and raised there. So that’s the concept of immigration, and the border has always been present in my life.

The evolution to social work is a long journey. I never thought I would ever be a social worker; that never entered my mind at all. I didn’t even know I was going to go to college. So thinking about those types of things, I–you know, my mom had always encouraged me to do well in school, but being an immigrant herself, she didn’t understand the U.S. school system. So I was an okay student, but not a great student. She, you know, again, encouraged me to do as well as I could. But I was fortunate enough to have teachers who really took an interest in me and motivated me to do better than I was doing. 

And so, because of that, they inspired me to be a teacher. So that’s what I want. I finally figured out what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to be a teacher. And I think that’s why education is still so important to me, because of my kind of journey. So I went to school. I went to Arizona State for my–got my undergraduate degree in education. And then I was a high school history teacher. So what I wanted to do was do the same thing for other students that my teachers did for me, and to help motivate them, guide them, and support them through the process. But, over time, you get frustrated. Like I think a lot of teachers do with administration and different restrictions about what you can and can’t do.

Then also I realized, you know, in high school you have several classes with at least 25 to 30 students. So you have more than a hundred students every day. It’s become really difficult to have individualized one-on-one attention and give them the support that they need. So I would work a lot with a school social worker to get them the resources that they needed and the support that they needed. And eventually, when talking to the school social worker, you know what, you should become a social worker because that’s how you’re really gonna be able to help and work with these students. So that got me thinking, and eventually I did go to get my master’s in social work, again, at Arizona State University. 

And so, yeah, that’s how my journey to become a social worker started, was my wanting to be a teacher because of how the teachers helped me, because I definitely wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything if it wasn’t for those teachers who took an interest in me. Most of the teachers I had were–expressed no interest at all and just were fine with me being a C student or whatever, and just continuing on. 

So lots of different experiences going through school, where you encounter teachers who don’t believe in you. And even when I had made the shift that, okay, I’m gonna apply myself and do really well in school and do everything that I can, you still have teachers who–so then when my grades started to improve, they didn’t see that as a positive thing. They saw it as like, oh, you must be cheating because you went from a C student to now an A student. So there’s something wrong instead of thinking like, oh, we’re proud of you that you’re making this shift.

So again, I wanted to try to go back to school–or be a teacher to provide those–like a different viewpoint for students to see somebody who has their similar background, as a teacher. Because I didn’t have anybody, not until college, to have a teacher who was Latino. So all of my teachers were white. And so again, just being able to see somebody in that position to say like, oh, that’s something that I can do. I never had that. So I wanted to be able to be that for other students. But just through the course of life, I ended up getting into social work, which I love because it is more kind of aligned with how I see the world and how I want to connect with individuals and communities and families. And so it has been really great. 

Jacoba Rock: One of the things that interests me about your story is really how you saw firsthand what a system experience was, and then you wanted to be involved in potentially changing it through furthering your education. How long were you working in the school system? 

David Becerra: Not that long, you know, I would say, I think three years, probably, or four years, but not that long at all. Yeah, it’s just, again, getting frustrated with systemic issues, and then even going further back, because the experience that lots of children of immigrants have is that you end up serving as a translator, interpreter for your parents. So, seeing and experiencing how different systems treated my mom, trying to access her in systems, and that made me realize that, people are being treated differently because–or she’s being treated differently because she doesn’t speak English, or because she’s Mexican. At a very young age, I started to notice, you know, a lot of the things that we’re being taught in school about the land of equality, and all of these things don’t necessarily play out in real life.

So, that kind of opened my eyes at a very young age to, like, okay, things are not great, and we need to…and people don’t… I don’t think people realize that if you don’t have those experiences, people don’t realize how those experiences affect others. And so, like, I’ve always… I think because of that, it’s shaped me to think about these, like, bigger macro issues in ways that I think many, especially social workers, may not be thinking about that, unfortunately. So, yeah, I think that…you know, being involved and being impacted by systems and how they can negatively affect your life and your trajectory and your ability to access resources and education and those types of things…made me think I wanted to be involved in more systemic change and support efforts to do that. 

Jacoba Rock: I giggled a little bit. I don’t think the recording picked it up, but it was because I remembered that before I went back for my MSW, I was working in a police department in Longmont, Colorado. I was running a restorative justice program there. And sometimes, the kiddos, who were mostly in the program, were sent there to complete probation requirements. I remember there’s a large Hispanic community there, and I remember my Spanish is not good, but I know my numbers. And there was a kiddo translating for his mother how many hours of community service he needed to do. But he was telling her a different number than I had said to him, and I knew just enough to say, uno memento. 

David Becerra: It can go the other way too, right, where you don’t tell your parents the whole story about when you’re in trouble about everything that’s happening, so yeah. 

Jacoba Rock: Yeah, exactly, but I love that community. I still do, and yeah, that’s funny that you mentioned that. The other thing that you said that really struck me is, like, you experienced it, you know, within your upbringing, some folks in the school system that were champions, and you wanted to become one of those champions, right? And we see a lot of social work students pursue social work for this reason, right? They’ve come through a lot of trauma or adversity, or their family’s been in the system. That’s true for me as well. And they want to be–you know, to right that, right? It’s not very simple. Maybe when we’re younger, at least for me, it seems simpler than it actually is. 

David Becerra: We’re gonna change the world, right? 

Jacoba Rock: Yeah, so a social work degree can be a really helpful tool in making that happen. But you mentioned social workers learning to think about systems at the macro level, right? And maybe that’s not happening as much as it should. What can we do in social work education to address that? 

David Becerra: I think that’s a challenge, right, because I think we’ve had a big shift in social work education and social work practice. I think probably since the 1980s, we’ve become much more focused on the individual and on individual issues and working with individuals and providing therapy, which is great and is needed. But, I think it’s come at a cost of focusing on the bigger picture issues, the macro issues, the systemic issues, because you can keep working with people individually, but you can’t work with everybody.

There’s just not enough social workers and not enough time to work with everybody individually, so you need to address–you need to do both, right? But, we’ve shifted so far to focus on the individual only that I think to the detriment of not just our profession, but I think of society as well. If you think about historically, if you think about our big social welfare programs, which none of them are perfect, granted, but, you know, Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Medicare, Medicaid, social workers were heavily involved in the design of all of those programs. And, I think they work better than a lot of things that have come post-social workers being involved in the development of social programs. 

I think for social work education, it’s hard because a lot of students come into social work because they want to be clinicians, therapists, and direct practice. They don’t–even though they might be interested in, like, macro issues, being involved in kind of systems change or policy change is not something that necessarily interests them. So, do you say, this is what we’re going to offer, and then you have a decreased number of students who want to become social workers because you’re not focusing on therapy and clinical skills. Or, do you find some way to kind of capture those students and get them to see, even though you want to be a therapist or clinician, this is why these things are important, and this is why you should care about them because they’re going to impact the people you work with on a day-to-day basis. 

And, I get criticized often for saying this, but you’re not going to deep breathe your way out of poverty or racism, you know, you need to do macro picture things in order to address these issues. So, in social work education, we have to find a way to bridge that divide. I don’t have the magic answers to that, but I know that we can’t lose sight of it because it’s easy to just–which I fear, a lot of schools of social work just provide lip service to the macro piece because you have to for reaffirmation, but don’t actually intentionally incorporate it into the education of students. 

So, I think it’s really important for social work education to authentically incorporate these macro issues and systemic change efforts into social work education. I know for a lot of people that’s somehow controversial. I’m not really sure why, because if you think about direct practice and you’re working with individuals and you want to be a therapist. You talk to the individual, you do an assessment, you come up with goals, and you develop a treatment plan. These are the things to address these issues that you’re experiencing. We’re going to work on these things and implement these changes, and this is the outcome that we hope to have.

If you think about that on a macro level, it should be the same thing, right? We’re assessing the situation. We’re developing strategies to address the issues that we’ve identified at the macro level, and we implement policies and procedures or systemic changes to address and improve those issues. You’re just doing like a macro level treatment plan, but for some reason people think of that as, you know, that’s somehow you’re kind of changing America as we know it, and somehow that’s bad.

Even though we have identified these issues that we want to improve, and I don’t think that social work education takes that step to–I think we do a good job of identifying issues, we don’t do a good job of figuring out, like, what can we do about them. As social workers, what is our role in addressing some of these issues? So, I think as educators, we need to really care about it and make sure that it’s an authentic piece of the curriculum and not just something that we check the box off for reaffirmation or whatever.

Jacoba Rock: Some of this, for me, comes from a time in social work education where we’re having students choose between micro- and macro-level practice. I’m sure there’s still some of that, but it seems like, at least increasingly, we’re recognizing the students need both. Many of those students who do go into direct clinical work will ultimately also be, you know, serving the committee or involved in system leadership, and so they need those skills and that knowledge. But one could also argue they needed earlier their clinical jobs, right, that you can do system change work in clinical roles. And should be doing if you’re a social worker. 

David Becerra: Right, because we can see that they’re probably going to need these skills because social workers, especially when you get an MSW…you’re encouraged to get into these leadership roles. And you often don’t have the skills because your training is so focused on clinical skills and direct practice skills that you don’t have the administrative skills or the systems change skills. And so while we might recognize that they probably need it early on as students, a lot of them are very steadfast in, no, I want more clinical skills. Why do I have to take this policy class? That’s not what I want to do. So it’s hard. And, I teach social policy classes. And I love it because to me, it’s great when I can see the aha moments when they’re like, oh, now I understand why this matters.

So I think that, like I said–or I think you’re right. I think that students need to have it early on, and don’t wait until they get to their master’s program. Like very early on in the bachelor’s program, we need to talk about why these things matter. Because even when students go from their bachelor’s of social work to their master’s of social work, a lot of times they will say, OK, that was kind of my bachelor’s level thing. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I want these advanced clinical skills. That’s not why I’m getting my master’s degree. I’ve done this already. I hear students talk about that a lot. We’ve already talked about this. Why do we have to keep talking about that? And I tell them, it’s because it’s important.

The example that I use, as I tell them, medical students, I’m sure they took lots of biology classes. And they don’t complain that they’re talking about this again, because it’s important. You want to have a deep set of knowledge and skills when you graduate. And so you’re going to keep emphasizing these things that even though you think aren’t important in the long run, you’ll see how they’re important. And one of the things that we need to do is make sure that we connect the dots for students. Because sometimes I think that we throw a lot of different things at them without actually connecting the dots and saying, this is why all of these things matter. And this is how these pieces impact each other, and kind of your role in that process. 

Jacoba Rock: So we need to better integrate these subjects. Or, you know, one thing that I’m imagining in my mind, because I’m pretty solution-oriented myself, is like a culminating experience where students really have to pull together, including macro skills into their work, right? It’s not just kind of a class they took that may or may not be useful. Or as you said, I think we do a good job of teaching students about system issues or how maybe systems are affecting clients, you know, as part of their background. But not necessarily, like, what do we do about these system issues, even when we’re clinicians or in other direct practice roles? What does that look like out in the field, right?

David Becerra: Right, because it’s hard. And it’s easy–I shouldn’t say it’s easy, but I think it’s more like self-rewarding when you’re working with individuals or families. You can see I’m working with this specific individual or family, and they have an issue. I’m helping them through it. And so there’s a personal reward at the end because I’m seeing the change, and then my role in that.

When you talk about systems issues, it’s so large, and things can take so long to make any kind of change systemically or in society that I don’t–I think students fear that it’s just gonna be a losing battle. And then also, if you just look up, you know, social work jobs, the clinician, therapist–all of those, that’s what’s gonna pop up. You can’t type in macro social worker and see any–there’s not gonna be a job like that, so students see that, and they’re like, well, I don’t wanna do that because I’m not gonna have a job. 

And so, again, like teaching students that there are opportunities to be involved at the macro level. And again, like you said, integrating all of these things together so that students have a different skill set or a variety of skills they have when they graduate that they can shift into these different roles, because one of the great things about an MSW degree is that it’s so flexible. You can do so many different things with an MSW degree. By the nature of the degree itself, but maybe everybody’s education and training is gonna be different. 

And so, I think for our school of social work is important that we make sure that students have all the skills that they need to transition into the different roles that they may have post graduation. But still really emphasizing, even if you’re gonna be a clinician, how the macro issues impact you and the people that you work with, and then how you can be involved in those, even though you’re a clinician, right? Don’t forget that it’s still part of our mission to be involved in these things. 

Jacoba Rock: Thanks for sharing your perspective on that. I think we share some viewpoints there. I’m a clinician still. I think one of the greatest things that I bring as a clinician is seeing firsthand thematic experiences in the client populations I work with. That knowledge is so important at the policy and program level, right? So, a lot of our clinicians, you know, could continue to see clients and families individually, but also be involved, right? And making changes based on that, you know, that expertise, if you were to use that word, about what these populations are experiencing. 

David Becerra: And I think that, you know, you bring up a good point. Like you as an individual, and there are individual clinicians that–I’m not saying that nobody does it, but it’s done at a very individual level. I don’t think that, as a profession, we facilitate ways for clinicians to do those types of things and to be involved in those larger systems change efforts. People do it because they’re interested in it at the individual level, but in social work education and as a profession, I don’t think we do a good job of creating those opportunities or facilitating clinicians who want to do that. To be able to do that in a kind of network that supports that…as a whole profession, not just as individual social workers. 

Jacoba Rock: Some of that happens in the field, right? In my current role, I don’t do much with the field, but it’s so important and powerful in our education programs. And I remember, like, some of the field evaluation tools at other institutions where there’s a question about, you know, how did this field placement teach you about policy or get you involved in making change at the meso or macro level, right? And a lot of the field folks would sort of check off, it didn’t happen here. Like, this just wasn’t an opportunity at this placement, right?

So, you know, maybe some of that change happens at the field level or out in the communities, not necessarily, like, amongst faculty and staff, but out in the communities where there are supervisors who could be thinking about how to bring that in because they are rewarding experiences. I mean, I’ve also seen the offset where there are students getting involved on DEI committees and on, you know, a system change kind of work at the committee and service level, really having a rewarding experience. 

David Becerra: Yes, and I was lucky, fortunate, when I first started my first social work position, my supervisor recognized–I was originally doing more direct practice working with adolescents, mostly Latino students, and their families around mental health issues, and then kind of navigating the school systems. But my supervisor realized that my–I would bring up a lot of, like, systems issues to her about when I would work with families, and so she realized that maybe my interests lay in more, like, macro change, so she basically shifted my position to be more, like…macro administrative focus.

And, so it gave me an opportunity to be involved with the state kind of board of health services, or I forget exactly what it’s called, and then going to meetings with the state legislature and those types of things, where you’re involved in, like, systems changes and policy decisions, and things that—so at the time, I don’t know how the systems are set up here in Idaho, but in Arizona, you have regional behavioral health authorities that are tasked with different regions of the state.

So at the time, the REBA, or kind of the Phoenix metropolitan area, was gonna do a survey about how to improve services and what issues the families are facing. And I had just started, and they were talking about it. They were reviewing the survey, and I just asked the question if they were gonna do the survey and the interviews, because they were gonna do both, there was gonna be a qualitative-quantitative study. If they were gonna do it in Spanish, and they said, oh, we didn’t even think about that.

And to me, Arizona has such a large Latino population that you would, like, how do you not think about those kinds of things? So again, just being able to be involved in those kinds of meetings and those processes, again, opened my eyes to–it has to be, like, how do you not see what, clearly, and why it’s, like, such a striking, glaring weakness in your approach?

You’re gonna miss out on so many families and their perspectives because you are not including them in your design. So that’s kind of what got me interested in going on to get my PhD, because I thought, okay, there has to be other ways to approach these issues that we’re tackling in it. And again, having diverse perspectives and voices at these tables, when people are making these decisions, is really important. Again, and I’m guilty of this also, you’re coming in with your own perspective, and sometimes you don’t realize what you’re missing, because that’s not your perspective. So, it’s really important to have as many people involved in these processes so that you can, you know, capture everybody’s perspective as much as possible, and you’re not excluding people unintentionally.

Jacoba Rock: So we’ve only gotten through the first question. 

David Becerra: Sorry. 

Jacoba Rock: No, that’s really good. Well, and really, you’ve shared some about your practice and research interests. How else would you capture your practice and research interests? 

David Becerra: So my research focuses primarily, especially over the past, I don’t even know, maybe 10 years, focuses more on the impact of our immigration policies on primarily Latino immigrants in the United States. So again, based on my own personal experience, being a child of an immigrant, growing up, basically, everybody that I knew was either an immigrant themselves or children of immigrants, and that experience and how that has shaped me. And then just moving to Arizona and then seeing the policies that emerge from Arizona and how intentionally cruel and…punishing they are.

And again, not just Arizona, but that’s kind of what started to…the evolution of my research was in Arizona, but of course, there are national policies that are just as bad. So, that has been the focus of my research, just looking at how, in different aspects of our immigration policies, you know, the impact on the individual themselves, the impact on the family, and then different kinds of impact, right? So, mental health impact, emotional impact, and financial impact. Looking at all of those things–again, because as much as we try to demonize this population, they’re part of our community, and they’re essential to our communities.

So, it’s important that we understand the issues that are impacting them so that we can develop more humane policies to support families instead of punishing families all the time. So that’s how, kind of, the evolution of my research and what my research focuses on. 

Jacoba Rock: How does that translate to Idaho, then? As you mentioned, some of these problematic policies are national level, of course. But thinking specifically about Idaho and about the communities and populations that our programs serve, and our online programs also serve many of the surrounding states as well, how does that connect here? 

David Becerra: Well, Idaho has a growing Latino population. There’s a lot of agriculture, and so, as a result, you have a lot of immigrants who move to the region for, you know, agriculture in different industries. And so, like, for me, I think it’s important that–everybody’s gonna have a different immigrant experience. And so, you know, my experience is specific to being Mexican, of Mexican descent, and that’s gonna be different than somebody who is Puerto Rican, Dominican, or on the East Coast. It’s gonna be a totally different experience.

So it’s important to–you know, here in Idaho, to meet with community members and understand the issues that are impacting people here. Specifically in Idaho, and what may be similar to experiences that I’ve encountered in my own personal life, and then just through my research. You can’t just assume that it’s gonna be the same here.

So it’s important to connect with communities. It’s important to understand the issues that are affecting them. And it’s important for us in the School of Social Work to have our students understand the populations that they’re going to be working with. So, I don’t know at this point how much our curriculum does that and how much we focus on the populations here in Idaho, specifically rural populations or Latino populations, but we need to because those are the populations that, you know, if you look at the university’s strategic plan and goals, specific populations that we need to make better outreach to and make sure that we support. 

And so I think that…you know, looking at the populations here, it’s an increasingly diverse population, even though it’s still overwhelmingly white in Idaho. Diversity is growing, and so it’s important that people recognize that and also understand that we need to serve all of Idaho, not just what has traditionally been the population that we serve. And so we need to understand what the issues are in order to better meet their needs, not just in the community but here in the school as well. 

Jacoba Rock: From my limited understanding, we have a large and growing population of Latinos and Latinas, especially adolescents, I think, in Idaho. And I’ve done a little bit of work in some of the communities outside of Boise. I don’t know, are there scholars here that you’ll work with in order to study those populations? 

David Becerra: I’ve been told of different people that I should connect with, but I haven’t made those connections yet. But yes, I’m definitely excited about the opportunities to work with the populations here and get a better sense of what the issues are here and how we can better support those populations.

So yeah, one of the things that is always interesting is just figuring out who the people are to connect with. But also, who are the right people to connect with, because sometimes…people who have been in communities for a long time…those may not be the best people to connect with because they sometimes have come out in a way that–they are not seeing the new issues that are coming out because they’ve been involved in the process so long that they’ve been doing a certain way all the time. So again, just figuring out ways to connect with people that we can kind of develop a network to support the populations here in Idaho. 

Jacoba Rock: Great, sounds like at least to some degree teaching our students research ethics and modeling that in our work. I know that sometimes damage has been done to these communities through research and through social work practice, despite, sometimes, the best of intentions, right? 

David Becerra: Yes, but not even sometimes. It’s sometimes intentionally horrible, but yes. 

Jacoba Rock: Yeah, yeah, fair. But one way I know of in order to start to build that capacity and that work is through having students with lived experience and with identities that represent those communities. Latino and latinas being one, but also, native reservations, aging populations…you know, rural areas with limited access for any number of reasons. So, we need to continue to diversify our student populations. And I know that you’ve mentioned that it is one of your goals to sort of build diversity amongst our students and create opportunities and access for those students. What are some steps that you have planned for pursuing that goal? 

David Becerra: Well, can we backtrack a little bit from something that you mentioned? Right, as the intersectionality of different identities and the ever-evolving nature of those intersecting identities, I think that it’s difficult because the challenge, I should say, for social work education is to keep making sure that our curriculum is current. That we understand that we have an increased number of different populations and diverse populations and a variety of diversity in a broad sense. And we shouldn’t just have a very generic and bland curriculum.

It needs to be dynamic and evolving, otherwise…which kind of leads into the next question. Otherwise, I don’t think that it serves anybody any good to recruit people from diverse populations to come and get their bachelor’s in social work or their master’s in social work, and they see themselves not reflected in the curriculum or their issues not reflected or addressed in the curriculum.

So, I think we need to do multiple things. I think that we need to look internally first and figure out, like for our current students or recent graduates, what are the things that we need to do better? So talk to them and say, what can we do better as a school to support you, to make sure that you’re successful? Or what didn’t we do? Where are we failing or lacking? So that way, when you go out, and you talk to new community members or go to the community college and recruit students, you can–you’re not just bringing to somebody–and you’re not bringing people into a situation that isn’t gonna be welcoming or supportive. 

You’re going to be already trying to identify and then address those issues because you’ve done that kind of pre-work. Because I think you’re doing more harm by recruiting diverse students to come to take classes here in an environment that may not be supportive for them. And then, what damage do you cause because then they’re gonna maybe be turned off by higher education completely.

So, we need to look inward and figure out, again, by talking to current and recent graduates, what we can do better to support them. And basically, if they could design support systems or structures, how would they do it? And then start implementing those, so that way, then we can go out to communities and say, look, these are the things that if you come here, we’re gonna have these supports for you. Because it’s hard for people who–first-generation students, rural students, students from diverse backgrounds of identities to come to university. 

And I don’t think people really realize how alienating it can be to leave your community, which is your safe space. And to come to the university, it’s jarring. Even for me at this stage, to move from a community that I’m used to to a brand new community here in Boise, even though everybody has been very nice, it’s still…something that you’d notice immediately that you are different.

And so, can we build support systems for students from diverse populations so that they can feel like this is a more welcoming environment? Because often what happens is we expect students to navigate kind of existing systems and then provide them with some support. But basically, the system or the structure is what it is, and we’ll help you navigate it. But, we’re not really gonna do anything to really alter it because it is what it is. And I don’t think that needs to be that way.

I think that we can provide systems that can start to think of things differently, right? Because if you think about communities or populations that have more collectivist viewpoints, coming to the university is a very individual process. And so, that’s not something that’s very comfortable for students who come from more collectivist identities and backgrounds and cultures. So, can we build a system where people feel connected? And that’s the challenge. I’m not saying that I have all the answers, but I think that we need to do, like, really look internally to figure out what we can do better to support students.

So, that way when people come, you can recruit them and say, we have all these supports for you to help you to be successful. Not just come so we can increase the number of diverse students and yay for us and pat ourselves on the back that way. I think we really need to be intentional about providing support for students so they can be successful. Otherwise, I think we all fail if we don’t do that. 

Jacoba Rock: In a lot of ways, it seems like we’re talking about creating system change in our education structure, in our higher education structure, in social work education, in a way that we want change to occur in other systems. I mean, so it’s like there’s outward work, connecting with communities, learning from communities, and learning about their experiences, their needs, and their barriers. But, also deeply personal and interpersonal work, too, to reflect on where we are at and what we need in order to be effective in that work and have it be sustainable, not performative, not just about numbers, but about people’s lived experiences of our programs in school. 

David Becerra: And it’s not just incumbent on the School of Social Work. It needs to be supported by the university as well, because we can’t do it alone, because the students aren’t just gonna interact with the School of Social Work. They’re gonna interact with the whole university. So, while we can start and do our part, it still needs to be part of a broader systems change to support students. And I’m hoping that is what happens. 

James Sherpa: Thank you for listening to the BroncoTales podcast. This conversation between Jacoba and Divisional Dean Becerra will continue in part two, coming out later this month. We hope to see you there.