Say It with Billboards: Social Work Honors Students Take on Large Honors Projects

Susan Lamoureaux and Lisa Calvert, social work honor students, meet to plan the first statewide conference for social work students. (photo BA)

Lisa Calvert and Susan Lamoureaux, graduate students in the Department of Sociology and Social Work, took on bringing attention to National Social Work Month in a big way. From creating beaded bookmarks to helping create a series of billboards celebrating social work, the two forged a creative and successful team. The billboards and bookmarks, impressive as they were, were dwarfed by the dynamic duo's collaborative honors project: the organization of the first statewide student social work conference, to be held in San Francisco on April 8, the day before the California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) holds their conference.

The project grew out of Calvert's interest in forming a local Student Association of Social Workers (SASW). Calvert contacted the parent organization, California NASW, who offered help and then asked if she would be interested in organizing a student conference. She asked Lamoureaux to work with her on the project, which became the first collaborative social work honors project at Chico State. First, they organized the CSU, Chico SASW, and then they began work on the student conference.

Calvert and Lamoureaux found they had several commonalties: both are married re-entry students with nine-year-old sons and four-year-old daughters. Both have college-educated older sisters who inspired them. Both are part of the first generation in their families to attend college.

Neither Calvert nor Lamoureaux had ever organized a conference, but doing something new suits Calvert's style. "I don't ask if it can be done. I look at it and ask how it can be done," said Calvert. Lamoureaux made most of the calls to speakers for the conference, finding a new confidence in the process, "It was quite a stretch," said Lamoureaux.

They took the wise and helpful first step of surveying a random sample of undergraduate and graduate students of social work throughout California on their interests. The keynote address will be "Ethical Challenges in the 21st Century," delivered by Maria Bartlett, a social work professor from CSU, Humboldt. Other topics will include politics and social work, gender issues, domestic violence, welfare reform, and thriving under pressure.

Pam Brown, Sociology and Social Work, is Calvert and Lamoureaux's adviser, and will moderate the conference. A series of student papers will be presented, and a panel of social workers will discuss workplace ethical issues that student interns may face. A recruitment fair at the conference will give students exposure to possible jobs in California.

What's next? Both Calvert and Lamoureaux plan to attend graduate school when Chico State begins its Master of Social Work program.

BA