Jan. 8, 2002

Hearst foundations award $500,000 to VCU's School of Social Work

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By Mary Beth Alford

RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Social Work has received a $500,000 gift from the William Randolph Hearst Foundations’ 2001 Initiative in Aging – one of the largest grants in the school’s history. The money will be used for endowed scholarships for master’s-degree students specializing in aging.

The award to VCU was one of five $500,000 grants made by the Hearst Foundations to encourage graduate students to choose aging as an area of specialization. The other awards went to social work programs at the State University at Albany, Washington University, the University of Houston and the University of California-Los Angeles.

"This is a unique opportunity for VCU and the School of Social Work," said Frank Baskind, Ph.D., dean of the school and president of the Council of Social Work Education. "This award will provide much-needed scholarship support for our master’s students specializing in aging at both our Richmond and Northern Virginia locations. This is a testimony about the strength of the faculty at the school and the nature of expertise in gerontology at VCU."

VCU’s School of Social Work is the fifth-largest school of social work in the country with about 900 students and the oldest school of social work in the South. It has both Richmond and Arlington locations and 300-400 students in the field at any given time working with community programs. Of those, 234 are MSW students in Northern Virginia. The school’s MSW program was ranked 13th among schools of social work on reputation in the 2001 U.S. News & World Report ranking of graduate schools. In various studies of faculty scholarship over the last five years, the school has ranked anywhere from 7th to 11th. In a survey of journal article publications for the 1990's, the faculty ranked 3rd in publications in social work journals and 8th in publications in non-social work journals. Since 1983, the School of Social Work and the Virginia Geriatric Education Center, which is part of VCU’s School of Allied Health Profession, have offered a joint master’s degree/certificate program, with a specialty in aging.


About the William Randolph Hearst Foundation

Philanthropist William Randolph Hearst established the Hearst Foundation in 1945. In 1948, he established the California Charities Foundation, which was renamed the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in 1951, after his death. Both foundations are independent, private philanthropies that give a total of about $40 million annually and operate separately from the Hearst Corp. The charitable goals of the foundations reflect the philanthropic interest of William Randolph Hearst and focus on four major areas: education, health, social service and culture. The foundations support higher education through the establishment of endowed scholarships. The $5 million 2001 Initiative in Aging was designed to increase the shortage of front-line professionals trained to coordinate and manage care of older people so they may live independently with dignity in the community.