New program director looking to help grow the Social Work Program
For various reasons, it didn’t work out the first time Jenni Jacobsen applied for a job at Ashland University several years ago.
The same thing happened a few years ago.
That didn’t deter Jacobsen, though, who was finally hired by the university as an associate professor and program director for its Social Work Program on her third try a few months ago.
“I trusted the process and felt like I would eventually end up here,” Jacobsen said recently from her office in the Schar College of Education building on campus. “It’s always been my goal to work at Ashland University. I love this community. I grew up here and I always wanted to come back here. It’s home for me.”
Administration, faculty and students are happy that Jacobsen, Ph.D., found her way back to Ashland, where she has always lived and commuted from to her previous jobs at Mount Vernon Nazarene University and, before that, at several schools and Children Services in Richland County.
“A great addition to the Social Work Program”
"Dr. Jacobsen brings a fresh set of eyes and new connections to community partners to our Social Work Program,” said Katherine Brown, Ph.D., dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “As the only accredited program in the College of Arts & Sciences, her years of experience are invaluable to us."
Student Nora Bacon said Jacobsen is a wonderful addition to the Social Work Department.
“Her insight in my Global Human Rights class is extremely applicable in many areas,” Bacon said. “As a Political Science major, the Social Work Department as a whole has allowed me to specialize in my field of interest and adapt to fit my major’s needs. I am happy to be a part of it.”
Another student, Mekenzie Flora, said she had the privilege of meeting Jacobsen during the application process and was impressed with how she connected with students.
“She really does her best to be involved and make us interested and active in our learning,” Flora said. “I thought she was the best person and a great addition to the Social Work Program! We truly appreciate her and are lucky to have her!”
Carly George, clinical assistant professor of Social Work at AU for three years, said Jacobsen’s knowledge in social work education, the accreditation process and the requirements to run a social work program are strong assets to AU’s Social Work Program.
“Jenni brings a good combination of the accreditation and reaccreditation knowledge but also the clinical knowledge because she still does keep her clinical skills up to date, which she’s doing by working in the community for that (at Appleseed Community Health Center as a crisis therapist for two on-call shifts a month),” George said. “Students really like that because when we teach we can give them stories, obviously maintaining confidentiality, but we can use real-life examples in our classes and they relate to that.”
“A perfect kind of merging” with Assistant Professor Carly George
George knew Jacobsen before this academic year as George was an adjunct professor at Mount Vernon Nazarene while working as a clinical director at an outpatient drug and alcohol facility. They also would run into each other at Council on Social Work Education conferences and both grew up in Ashland but weren’t in school together.
“Her mom was actually my geometry honors teacher in high school,” George said about Jacobsen.
“Her mom was my fifth-grade teacher,” Jacobsen said about George.
Jacobsen said it’s a great partnership between the only full-time Social Work instructors at AU.
“It’s a perfect kind of merging because she’s more field-oriented, so is the field director – where that is not my expertise,” Jacobsen said. “I’m more knowing the accreditation policies.”
AU’s Social Work Program is up for reaccreditation this year.
“The Council on Social Work Education accredits our program, which is very important to maintain that so students can sit for the licensure exam when they graduate and they can become LSWs (Licensed Social Workers) and, if they wanted to, can go into mental health counseling with that license,” said Jacobson, who handled that process at Mount Vernon for not only its bachelor’s program, but also its online master’s program that she created over the past year and will launch at the beginning of 2025.
Social Work professors love to support the “whole student”
Growing the program, which has about 40 students, is another goal for Jacobsen and George, who recruited six students into the program for 2024-25 and is working on getting more information out to social work students at North Central State College in Mansfield about the transfer pathway to turn their two-year associate degree into a bachelor’s degree with two more years at AU.
They both said social workers are needed across the state and nation with a huge shortage in behavioral health. Even before the mental health crisis from the COVID pandemic, it was trending toward a shortage of mental health workers. Social workers fill a majority of the mental health jobs, they agreed.
“So, they are critical to closing that gap in behavioral health care,” Jacobsen said. “There are so many open positions. I think it’s important for our students to realize if you graduate with a social work degree and get licensure, you’re going to find a job, and the wages are increasing because of that. You will even see that social work students are getting sign-on bonuses.”
Social work also is a very broad career beyond mental health work, added Jacobsen. While most people think of social workers being in child welfare, they also can work in public welfare, in courts advocating for domestic violence victims and in helping people with physical and intellectual disabilities.
If anyone wants to talk to Jacobsen about AU’s Social Work program, she would be happy to. Just be aware that she will be going by a different last name after Oct. 19, when she is getting married and will start being known as Jenni Schulz.
And Jacobsen (soon-to-be Schulz) and George support their students in more ways than just academically.
“We go to their athletic events, we go to band concerts and whatever else they are involved in,” George said. “We really like to support them as a whole student.”