SUMMARY: Saint James College offers masters degrees both in Counseling and Social Work. We are proud to have as a member of our staff the esteemed Janice A. Learman. Professor Learman received her M.S.W. from the University of Buffalo, obtained her certified social worker license, Task Force on Homelessness, Board Member of Benedict House for HIV positve patients, served on the transplant committee at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., did Family Caregiving Training at Catholic Charities, and membership in the National Association of Social Workers, Americal Assn. of Nephrology Social Workers.

Professor Learman served in administrative leadership positions in a series of New York State family care facilities. Also supervised a geriatric care program for Catholic Charities, and coordinated regional assessment and planning at the Rochester Psychiatric Center.

Learman's extensive background also includes conducting workshops and training for women, geriatrics, chronic and acute medically ill as well as seriously and persistently mentally ill adults. She also has an extensive background in grief work in the Buffalo Center for Bereavment, and served as a social worker in Legal Services. Her wide-ranging career also includes child protection and foster care. Today, Ms. Learman serves as a victim assistance investigator throughout the southern United States as well as an active board member for the Collective For Orphan Care and Education (COCE).

NON-DEGREE CERTIFICATION is also available in the areas of hypnosis, stress management, geriatric mental health, Schizophrenic and Biopolar Disorder Treatment and Management, Grief and Bereavement, Death and Dying..

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This program is for a Masters in Social Work degree and is designed for mid or late-career distance learners who need to enhance their clinical skills or to obtain an advanced degree to satisfy specific career requirements. The typical student in this program will have been a counselor or worked in human services for several years, will possess a strong undergraduate academic background, and will be seeking to learn administrative skills, upper level management, Pain Management, Sress Management, Hypnosis, Womens, Geriatric, and Seriously and Persistently Mentally Ill patients. While you may be awarded a M.S.W. degree through this program, it will not qualify you in most states to sit for a Certified Social Worker or Licensed Certified Social Worker exam. This program is designed as a career-enhancer for those who are either already licensed, or who need an advanced degree but do not require additional licensing.

Each certificate program, undergraduate, and graduate degree candidate's requirements will be tailor-made to incorporate the previous experience that the student brings to the program. Except for students who elect to serve internships or residencies, all coursework involves online study modality.

An M.S.W. degree (Masters of Social Work) is an advanced post-graduate degree that connotes that one has reached the pinnacle of his or her academic life. For counselors today, a doctorate in clinical psychology or a Masters Of Social Work degree as increasingly becoming a professional requirement for those wishing to provide psychotherapeutic services. This is true whether in a government agency, private clinic, hospital setting, or in a private counseling practice. Increasingly, to serve in a management capacity in many institutional settings, you must have an MSW degree.

Greater earnings come with a Masters of Social Work degree: Statistically, a counselor with an MSW earns roughly double the amount earned each year by someone with just a bachelors education. (Survey, salary.com.)

M.S.W. social workers and counselors earn considerably more in today's market...

Online Education is growing incredibly rapidly: Salary.com says: "Online education is widely accepted as being just as valuable as the classroom experience." They add: "The growing popularity of online courses is undeniable, with online enrollment currently growing at a staggering 33% a year. There are more than 3 million students currently involved in distance or online learning according to the Distance Education and Training Council. And in today's increasingly connected world, this number continues to grow, and at a faster rate."

Saint James College is proud to offer a premiere online educational program, and is one of the least expensive degree-granting institutions in the United States (due to our being owned and endowed by an inter-faith spiritual denomination, The Love Church Worldwide).

What's Required for a M.S.W. at Saint James College: 1. 60 credit hours are required for a Masters of Social Work 2. Possession of a bachelors degree is normally a prerequisite. (NOTE: The College offers certain highly-experienced adult learners the option of obtaining a masters without a bachelors degree provided the student has adequate non-degree college and significant real-life work experience. In this case, you may be eligibile for our "Real Life Experience Fast Track Program."© This consolidates pre-earned undergraduate and graduate credits, combining them with real-life professional experience (explained further, below) 3. Your background should typically be in the same discipline in which you are seeking your masters. For example, a Masters of Social Work degree candidate must have demonstrated academic experience in a closely-related discipline such as counseling, psychotherapy, psychology, social work, substance abuse,or a pertinent human services field. 4. A portion of the 60 credit hours required for an MSW degree may include transfer credits from earlier study (or equivalent CEU credits) earned at a previous college or university. Alternatively, this option may be met by "real-life experience" of candidates who have participated in a related field that the faculty recognizes as equivalent to an internship or practicum. For example, a candidate for a M.S.W. in the area of Stress Management could show having previously earned credit hours related academic field or had professional employment in a family practice clinic, a pain management practice or, perhaps, in a similarly-oriented chiropractic office. 5. You May Choose between a Thesis or Other Approved Project a. Dissertation Option: The College is cognizant of the fact that the vast majority of its student body is comprised of adult learners who may have already made significant professional contributions within their chosen field of expertise. Masters of Social Work candidates may therefore choose a variety of "final project" options. One of these is to research and write a traditional masters thesis. If this option appeals to you, the Thesis must be original research or a report outlining topically pertinent information. It must be of publishable quality. Thesis topics and format must be pre-approved by faculty. Theses are required to range between a well-written 50 pages or more, with at least 100 words per page. b. Learning Journal Option: If a mid-career M.S.W. candidate has at least two years "real-life" experience in her or his chosen masters field, the student may substitute a Learning Journal Project instead of writing a thesis. This journal will be assessed by the faculty or masters committee and must satisfactorily document that the candidate has a full grasp of and is competently conversant with the essentials of the chosen field of study. This journal will become part of the College's permanent archives and must be written in such a manner as to serve as an instructional resource for future students or for professionals working in the candidate’s field of study, such as counseling, education, divinity, hard science, journalism/writing, criminal justice, health and wellness, etc. c. Internship Option: As an alternative to the Thesis or the Learning Journal option, the M.S.W. candidate may serve a pre-approved Internshipin an institutional setting consistent with her or his chosen field of study. This could include a counseling MSW candidate serving in a women's health clinic, a hospice, or a drug and alcohol treatment program. Or, a Masters of Social Work candidate interested in women's issues may be authorized to serve an Internship in a rape intervention program, or a clinic offering psychotherapy oriented toward women. Or, with faculty permission, you could have the work you are currently doing be accepted to meet the internship requirement. NOTE: Under exceptional circumstances, the faculty may deem that previously-completed service may satisfy Internship requirements. TUITION COST FOR A SAINT JAMES COLLEGE M.S.W.: All tuitions are determined by the amount of previous academic and real-life experience that students bring to the program. Depending on the scope of documented experience in a student's portfolio, tuition may range from $2,500 for a well-prepared candidate to $5,000 for a student who enters the program with little previous graduate credits or experience. Saint James College has limited scholarship funding available and also routinely arranges for convenient student loan payments to be made at zero percent interest. We have arguably the least-expensive student loan program in North America.

ALL previous college / university credits will be accepted: It is often a fact of life for mid-career adult students that their previous college experience occurred in the somewhat distant past, frequently a considerable number of years ago. Adult learners frequently have a great deal of difficulty transferring these fully-legitimate-but-old credits into new educational programs. Unlike most colleges and universities, Saint James College routinely accepts all documented academic credits that you have earned previously at other institutions of higher education. This is true even for credit hours earned years previously. As an example, if your credits were earned ten years ago, most schools require that you re-take large numbers of courses when you enroll in their programs. Naturally, this brings in tidy amounts of extra income for them. But, with Saint James College, we do not require you to retake previously-completed courses as a means of generating profits for our school.

How long will it take me to get my Masters of Social Work degree? If you bring only limited pre-existing graduate-level college credit and if your "real-life experience" is limited in scope, it could take from one to two years of self-paced study. However, students with some graduate-level college credits (or CEUs) coupled with a strong background in "real life experience," find it possible to complete their studies in months. We are not a diploma mill! You must study and complete courses, or you must have the necessary background for our Fast-Track Program©. If you do and if you invest the appropriate amount of time in our online distance-learning program, you may complete your MSW degree program rapidly. Each student works at a different pace, so it’s up to you how quickly you can complete your studies.

Two caveats: We are accredited by the Association of Accredited Bible Schools. We strictly adhere to our mission of providing world-class education in a conveniently-presented distance learning format. Our courses are academically sound, our faculty and instructors are highly-competent and helpful, and we strive to offer among the lowest tuition rates in North America. Because we are a relatively new college, we are not yet regionally accredited. This is less and less important in today’s job market where employers are hungry for qualified employees and have fewer concerns about regional accreditation than in the past. Our degrees are not regionally accredited by an agency accepted by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, but they are real degrees, legitimate, and awarded by a college that is sponsored by a fully-chartered parent, The Love Church Worldwide inter-faith denomination. Still, it is not the intent of our M.S.W. program to prepare or authorize graduates to go on to achieve state licensing using our degree as the qualifier. Our program is solely designed to provide additional clinical skills and to introduce MSW candidates to new treatment modalities.

As many as 99% of non-traditional education students surveyed by a government-sponsored study said that they feel their degree meets or exceeds a traditional degree.

The study showed that roughly one-fifth of those who were awarded a non-traditional under-graduate degree went on to obtain a masters or doctorate. 97% of the non-traditional undergrads were accepted by the grad school that they preferred. Three percent reported some difficulties in presenting a non-accredited degree or transcripts from a non-accredited college, or for having obtained real-life experience credits. The bottom line is that the study showed that a full 94 percent reported no difficulty in being admitted to graduate school due to having an unaccredited degree or earning it through non-traditional or online education.

(See Sosdian, Carol P. and Sharp, Laure M., The External Degree as a Credential: Graduates’ Experience in Employment and Further Study, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.)

The second caveat is that Saint James College degrees must have a "spiritual flavor" to them. Due to being owned by a chartered religious denomination, the government requires that our degrees be awarded with a relationship to a church or spiritual competency. You may sign your name with your credentials, such as Kathy Smith, M.S.W., or Larry Jones, M.S.W., but the government requires that your actual Saint James College diploma must say "Masters of Social Work in Spiritual Counseling" or, perhaps, "Masters of Social Work Parish Family Counseling." Because our degrees were designed at the outset to assist priests, ministers, and spiritual workers to increase their competencies and advance their careers, this has been consistent with our mission. It also enables us to offer Masters and other degrees for as much as 95% below the "market" cost in traditional education. Nonetheless, this requirement may not be acceptable to all students. Consider all higher educational degree programs carefully and choose one that matches both your budget and also your professional needs.