The year 1899 marked the birth of a one-building state-authorized school known as Southwest Texas State Normal School. Built on the banks of the crystal-clear San Marcos River in the rural Hill Country of central Texas, the quiet school grew slowly but steadily from its original student population of 330, always emphasizing teacher education.

Today, after providing education for 100 years, that school is known as Texas State University-San Marcos (“Texas State” for short). The sixth-largest university in the second-most populous state in the nation, Texas State serves 28,132 students who choose from 114 undergraduate degrees, 81 master degrees, and 6 Ph.D. degrees in seven different colleges. It is located in San Marcos, a community of about 50,000 people, and enjoys some of the ease of living that a smaller city affords. Yet the University has an urban feel, too: it is located about 40 miles north of San Antonio and 40 miles south of Austin. The Austin-San Antonio corridor is one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation. If current trends continue, in the next 2-3 decades, this corridor will double its present population, becoming a sprawling megalopolis of about 6 million people.

The Genesis of Social Work at Texas State

By 1970, the old teachers' school was known as Southwest Texas State University and served about 6,000 students. That year the Department of Sociology initiated a small collection of social work courses.

From those humble beginnings, the courses grew in number and popularity until they were grouped as the Walter Richter Institute of Social Work in the Department of Sociology and the College of Liberal Arts. The Institute offered a BSW degree which the Council on Social Work Education initially accredited in 1978 and has reaccredited continuously to the present.

By 1996, the Richter Institute had been designated the Department of Social Work with a faculty of six. In 1997, The Department created the Richter Institute of Social Work Research to encourage and coordinate social work research. That same year, the Department of Social Work joined the College of Health Professions and moved to its present location in the Health Science Center. The College has nine different departments and programs, including the School of Social Work, all of which teach subjects that contribute to health and well-being of both individuals and the larger society.

Walter Richter (1916-2003), a friend of Lyndon Johnson, served Texas as a state senator and leader of a number of War on Poverty programs. Though not a social worker, Mr. Richter was a strong, progressive visionary who was a great friend to the School of Social Work.

Social Work Gives Birth to a Center

In 1988, Dr. Nancy Feyl Chavkin and Dr. Karen Brown of the School applied for and received a Title IV-B grant, which grew to include Title IV-E grants. The work of the IV-B and IV-E grants was housed in the School's Center for Children and Families (CCF). The Center's funding allowed the School to develop child welfare courses of various types, including minority studies. In conjunction with the state's public child welfare agency, the Center distributes stipends to qualified students who wish to pursue a career in child welfare and are willing to commit to pay-back time for stipends received. Eventually, stipend recipients were placed in student units in the state's child welfare agency, supervised by Grant Specialists through the Center.

The Center also focuses on research, evaluation, and dissemination of knowledge about how to educate and retain child welfare staff. Part of this effort is the IV-E Roundtable, a yearly meeting which now attracts more than 100 educators and public child welfare staff from 7 states. Faculty connected with the Center have also regularly presented and published their findings.

In 2002, the Center, in recognition of its extensive partnership with the College of Education and other units in the University, was named a University Center. Consequently, though it is a valuable, active, and close partner with the School, it is no longer only tied to our School, but to the University as a whole.

Social Work Crafts a Masters Degree Program

The Texas State University Board of Regents, which has legislatively-authorized power over Texas State and several other Texas universities, became interested in developing a Master of Social Work degree program. After conducting an assessment of whether more MSW education was needed in the area and deciding that the MSW indeed would be well-received, the Board authorized the MSW educational program on Texas State University campus. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved the Texas State MSW degree program in 1994, and called for it to begin in 1995. The School of Social Work then had to develop the degree quickly. Doubling its faculty, the School worked hard to create an MSW curriculum that was consistent with the existing BSW mission.

The resulting MSW degree program, which built on the University's mission, was accredited by CSWE in 2000, and is currently accredited through 2012. It continues to grow as a robust unit of the School, with approximately 120 students, students at an offsite MSW degree program on the campus of University of Houston-Victoria, and an on-line MSW degree program for rural child welfare workers. The BSW degree program also boasts approximately 100 students. The MSW degree program originally grew out of the BSW framework and remains closely connected to it; all faculty, for instance, teach in both the BSW and MSW curricula. The MSW degree program, however, continues to develop more of its distinct identity over time.

Social Work Graduates to School Status