Heritage University granted candidacy for Master of Social Work program

TOPPENISH, Wash. — Heritage University has been working hard to get a new Master’s program at the school. The Council on Social Work Education ( CSWE ) granted candidacy to HU’S Master’s in Social Work ( MSW ) program.

There are 27 MSW students who start class as early as this Saturday. It’s taken years to turn this dream into a reality.

“We've been thinking about beginning that program, however, I mean, it takes money, it takes time, it takes people, right?” Asked Miguel Juarez, the MSW program director.

The CSWE granted candidacy status for the program, which means classes can start while the University works toward accreditation. To move from the first to the second benchmark, the Council is looking for program results.

“What they want to see is the data. In order to have data, we need to begin our first and second cohorts, respectively,” said Juarez.

Juarez said MSW grads are needed, nationwide, and especially locally. While having the BSW program at Heritage has been extremely beneficial, some positions just need the graduate degree.

Students who start their studies at HU will graduate from an accredited program retroactively once full accreditation is achieved. Faculty is hoping that will happen in the summer of 2026.

Getting the graduate degree is something one MSW student said has always been encouraged in classes, but there were few options when it came to pursuing it.

“Like many of my classmates, we were already looking for what that might look like, and we saw that there was nowhere near here that had a Master's in Social Work program. We had to travel away,” said Victoria Gonzalez, a social work graduate student taking part in the first cohort.

Gonzalez graduated with her BSW from Heritage University in 2015, and she’s back to get her MSW now.

Corey Hodge, the Social Work Department Chair for Heritage University explained that there are only three other accredited MSW programs in the state of Washington: University of Washington , Eastern Washington University and Walla Walla University .

“All of them require travel, so either students were doing fully online programs around the country—there are a number of fully online programs—or they were incorporating long distance travel into their pursuit of master's level education,” said Hodge.

Now, there’s a local solution with local programming. The studies are also focused on the practice of rural social work, with a special focus on the Latinx and indigenous population often served in the region.

Gonzalez has been working for RGI Corporation in Sunnyside, writing grants and doing evaluation work for universities and school districts across the state and country with her BSW. It was her team that spotted the grant application from the Department of Education for school-based mental health services . The RGI Corp. team worked together to quickly collaborate and write a proposal to bring this program to Heritage University, in partnership with ESD 105.

“This grant came across our desk and it was on a very tight timeline, two weeks, to be exact, and so we were—we didn't know if this was going to be something that we can collaborate and get HU on board with, but we knew that it would have been incredible, as I said before that, to have a Master's in Social Work program here,” explained Gonzalez. “I have some incredible colleagues that were on my team to say, like, ‘let's advocate for this and let's make it happen.’”

Gonzalez said HU was on board, and in those two weeks, the team submitted the proposal, and then the program was funded.

“Ultimately, the goal of the grant is to be able to bring resources to the students, and to the community, and that's exactly what HU does, in terms of, you know, getting folks educated, and then hopefully they stay here and give back to the community,” said Gonzalez.

This first cohort of MSW students are all advanced-standing students, meaning they have a BSW, rather than a degree in another related field of study. All 27 students are also Heritage alumni. In the advanced-standing path, students need 34 credits to graduate, which takes one year. The traditional path requires 60 credits, and a two-year program if a student does not have a BSW.

This also means more staff is coming to the HU team.

“We actually have two-and-a-half more full time faculty than we did when we just had a Bachelor's program, and we will be adding another full time faculty member in the 25-26 academic year,” said Hodge.

Juarez explained there are 22 new courses added for this degree, all programmed in the last year and a half since the pre-candidacy process began. Classes meet seven times per semester in person, and is otherwise a hybrid learning model.

Around 140 students are studying this year to receive a BSW with Heritage University.

The new Master of Arts in Mental Health Counseling also starts this year at HU. The first course in that program starts Friday.

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