Boise State welcomes Randy Magen as the new director of the School of Social Work.
“Randy’s unique experiences and vast knowledge will make him a strong leader for the School of Social Work,” said Tim Dunnagan, dean of the College of Health Sciences. “We are excited to have him here at Boise State and I look forward to working with him in the years to come.”
Magen brings a wealth of experience to Boise State after teaching and leading social work programs at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he was a tenured faculty member for 17 years. He served as the acting director and MSW program coordinator for the school for a year and served again as the MSW program coordinator for another four years. Magen also served as associate dean for the university’s College of Health for the last three years. In 2009, Magen was the Lady Davis Fellow visiting professor for five months at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.
Magen has a doctorate in social welfare and a master of science in social work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also has a bachelor of arts in ethnic and intergroup relations from James Madison College at Michigan State University. He is credentialed as an Academy of Certified Social Workers and is a Licensed Masters Level Social Worker in the State of Alaska.
Magen’s teaching interests include research, program evaluation, foundations of social work practice, social work interviewing, and social work with groups. Magen has served as an expert witness in domestic violence related cases for the state of Alaska, provided evaluation consultation for federal grant proposals for the Office of Children’s Services in Alaska, and has served as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health.
Magen is a member of the editorial board for Small Group Research and a member of the National Association of Social Workers, the Council on Social Work Education, and the Society for Social Work Research.
Magen’s wife is a nurse practitioner and they have two mostly grown children, a daughter who is 27 and a son who is 24.
In addition to offering a bachelor of arts in social work program, Boise State’s School of Social Work offers Idaho’s only public master of social work (MSW) program after being designated by the State Board of Education to deliver MSW education throughout Idaho. To accomplish this mission, the school has three sites outside of Boise: Coeur d’Alene, Lewiston and Twin Falls. Recently, Boise State’s MSW program was ranked top in the nation for its superior value, according to a survey conducted by Graduateprograms.com.