Welcome to Thoughts on Purpose.
This space is designed to share reflections on the issues shaping our profession, highlight the work happening across our School, and connect our everyday efforts to the broader mission that brought many of us to social work in the first place.
Social work is a profession rooted in action, but it is also a profession rooted in meaning. Our work asks us to respond to urgent needs while also holding a longer view: What kind of communities are we helping to build? What systems are we challenging or transforming? How are we preparing the next generation of practitioners, scholars, and leaders to meet a changing world?
At a time when higher education, health systems, public institutions, and communities are navigating significant change, the role of social work feels especially urgent. Questions of equity, access, mental health, belonging, economic security, and justice continue to shape daily life for individuals and communities alike. Social workers are often called to stand at the intersection of these challenges—not simply to respond, but to help imagine and create better possibilities.
That work is deeply reflected in our School.
Across Rutgers School of Social Work, our faculty continue to produce research that advances knowledge and informs policy. Our staff support the infrastructure that makes our teaching, scholarship, and service possible. Our students bring energy, curiosity, and commitment to classrooms, practicum placements, and community partnerships. And our alumni continue to extend the School’s mission into practice settings, organizations, agencies, and communities around the world.
Over the past several months, we have celebrated milestones both large and small from academic achievements and research successes to community-centered events that remind us why connection matters. During Social Work Month in March, we had an opportunity to reflect on the enduring relevance of our profession and the values that anchor it: service, dignity and worth of the person, social justice, integrity, competence, and the importance of human relationships.
Those values are not abstract. They show up in how we teach, mentor, collaborate, advocate, and care for one another.
This new space is intended to build on that momentum.
Each month, Thoughts on Purpose will offer reflections connected to timely issues in social work, higher education, and our broader social context, while also highlighting the ways Rutgers School of Social Work is engaging these conversations. Some posts may focus on moments of celebration, such as graduation or community milestones. Others may invite us to consider challenges facing the profession, emerging opportunities, or institutional priorities for the future.
The goal is simple: to create a thoughtful, authentic space that helps connect our work to a larger sense of purpose.
In a fast-moving environment, it can be easy to move from one deadline, meeting, or obligation to the next without pausing to consider the broader significance of what we are building together. Reflection is not separate from action; it strengthens it.
As we move through the remainder of the academic year and begin looking ahead to what comes next, I hope this space can serve as both a touchpoint and an invitation to think critically, stay connected, celebrate progress, and remain grounded in the mission that defines our School.
Thank you for all you do to make Rutgers School of Social Work a vibrant, thoughtful, and impactful community.
More to come. On purpose.
George Leibowitz, PhD, LICSW
Dean and Distinguished Professor, Rutgers School of Social Work