Learning Together: A Dialogue on Collaborative MSW Thesis Advising

ABSTRACT

In this coauthored reflection, we share our experiences as three MSW students and one PhD student working closely together over the 2013–2014 academic year on MSW thesis projects. The PhD student served as research advisor for our group, but we created a collaborative supervision structure. We met weekly by Skype during busy periods, read each other’s drafts, coded excerpts of each other’s interviews, pushed at and challenged each other’s analyses, and encouraged each other at each step. This reflection is based on a recorded, transcribed, and edited dialogue between the four of us, three years later.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaborative learning
• peer based learning
• thesis advising

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David S. Byers

David S. Byers, PhD, MSW, LICSW, completed his PhD at Smith College School for Social Work in 2016. This fall 2017, David will join the tenure track faculty of the Graduate School for Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College as assistant professor. David also continues to teach at Smith in the advanced Clinical Supervision Certificate Program. He has written and presented on bullying, cyberbullying, prosocial accountability, social identity, clinical theory and diagnosis, history and philosophy of social work, and international social work. As a doctoral student, David advised MSW thesis projects every year beginning in fall 2012.

Joel Coburn

Joel Coburn, LCSW, completed his MSW at Smith College School for Social Work in 2014. He has worked as a psychotherapist at a community mental health clinic in Northampton, Massachusetts. He is pursuing certification as a sex therapist and recently joined a sex therapy group practice in Florence, Massachusetts. Joel has provided trainings about clinical work with queer, trans, and genderqueer clients for social work students and therapists working in community mental health.

Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz

Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz, LMSW, completed her MSW at Smith College School for Social Work in 2014. She works as psychotherapist in New York City, dividing her time between community mental health work at the Blanton Peale Institute and Counseling Center and an LGBTQ affirming sex therapy practice. Avigail also graduated from the Mitchell Center for Relational Studies in the spring and is pursuing sex therapy certification.

Paige Hustead

Paige Hustead, ASW, completed her MSW at Smith College School for Social Work in 2014 and now works as a clinical social worker at the Institute on Aging in San Francisco. Paige coordinates complex discharges for clients at skilled nursing facilities who desire to live in the community with support. She facilitates a clinical writing group and is currently organizing a multiday training on the topic of cultural humility and power dynamics in the social worker–client relationship.