Invited Symposium II: Science in Social Work Doctoral Education

Today's doctoral students are tomorrow's faculty and scholars. Thus social work doctoral education is central to cultivating rigorous science in social work. During the summer of 2013 an invited roundtable examined special challenges facing social work doctoral education. Participants developed working papers on a series of challenges to nurturing social work doctoral students as future scientists. Two of those papers are the basis of this invited symposium. In the first paper, Dr. Dunkle and Dr. Grogan-Kaylor examine promises and perils of Big Data for building the science of social work. Their presentation will particularly examine challenges to social work doctoral education to train scholars adept at exploiting the potential for new knowledge presented by massive data accumulation. The second paper examines identity formation and transformation in social work doctoral education. In particular, Dr. Mor-Barak and Dr. Brekke detail processes by which social work doctoral students come to self-identify as scientists. This new identity may be in addition to or in place of other self-identities the doctoral student may have previously owned including that of social work practitioner. Both papers address important facets of cultivating the next generation of faculty and scholars for social work.