SEPTEMBER 21, 2022 • VOLUME 93 • ISSUE 3
The official student newspaper of Quinnipiac University since 1929
CAT MURPHY/CHRONICLE
Over 200 Braille signs on Mount Carmel Campus do not comply with ADA guidelines p. 2
JACK SPIEGEL/CHRONICLE
A&L P.6: One step foward Emily Sweeney, first-ever QBSN chairwoman looks to promote diversity and inclusion
JACK SPIEGEL/CHRONICLE
OPINION P.4: Broken promises Contributing writer Nicholas Pestritto expresses his disappointment toward QU’s construction delays
CONNOR GORMAN/CHRONICLE
SPORTS P.11: Baseball’s weird off-season
Sports Editor Ethan Hurwitz dives nto a confusing summer for Quinnipiac baseball
Combating social worker shortage through inter-college connections Quinnipiac partners with Albertus Magnus to offer masters in social work By KATIE LANGLEY News Editor
Graduates of nearby Albertus Magnus College will now be eligible to complete their masters in social work at Quinnipiac University after a new agreement between the two schools was announced by email Sept. 8. Professor Stephanie Jacobson, associate chair of the department of social work, said the idea for the program started with Albertus Magnus’ sociology department, which was looking to build a pathway for students to pursue social work at the graduate level. Since creating a new master’s degree program is an intensive process and Quinnipiac and Albertus Magnus are only separated by 20 minutes, the two faculties decided to create a “mutually beneficial” partnership, Jacobson said. Located in New Haven, Albertus Magnus has around 1,300 students, comprising 600 tra-
ditional undergraduate students and 700 adult undergraduate and graduate students. Albertus Magnus students will be able to decide in their second or third undergraduate year if they want to apply for the MSW program at Quinnipiac, Jacobson said. Students are required to have completed 20 undergraduate liberal arts credits and exhibit a 3.0 GPA to apply. Those that are accepted into the program will go on to take three master’s-level classes at Quinnipiac in their junior or senior year of undergraduate study. “(Albertus Magnus MSW students) will have nine credits that double count toward their undergrad at Albertus Magnus, and then those nine credits will be part of the graduate credits when they come for the master’s program (at Quinnipiac),” Jacobson said. Pedro Silva, a third-year graduate student pursuing his MSW at Quinnipiac, is the presi-
dent of the Social Work Association of Graduate Students and the former president of the Connecticut chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Silva, who received his bachelor’s degree from Quinnipiac in psychology and sociology last year, said that the new partnership gives students from a smaller school more opportunity to expand their education, as a MSW is the highest degree social workers can obtain. “I think it’s a great partnership,” Silva said. “We’ve always strived to try to bring access to more social workers in Connecticut. I’ve seen from me being an untraditional student and transferring into Quinnipiac to do the MSW program, there’s always barriers for non-traditional students.” The updated MSW program is attempting to eliminate some of those barriers by reserving 10 seats for Albertus Magnus students in the
program’s acceptance process, Jacobson said. Jacobson said that the new collaboration between Quinnipiac and Albertus Magnus will help to bring students in and increase “diversity of perspective” within the department and the university. “Albertus Magnus has a much higher percentage of students of color (than Quinnipiac) and also first-generation students going to college,” Jacobson said. “So having a pipeline for them to go into a graduate program and be prepared and already have taken some of the credits when they come over, we’ll just increase the number of social workers ready to serve a more diverse community.” Albertus Magnus has over 31 percent Black students and over 18 percent hispanic students, compared to Quinnipiac’s over 81 See SOCIAL WORK Page 2