Find your path
We offer three undergraduate minors to enhance and compliment your major and future goals. Minors are open to all current University of Minnesota undergraduates.
Learn how to drive real social change
Learn how to question critically, discover how to be an activist, and work to transform the world.
In our classrooms, we create respectful space for all opinions. Your learning will draw on theory and practice, with valued knowledge from both the University and local community experiences. We believe in equity and fairness in every aspect of the human experience, recognizing struggles for liberation, and social movements of many people globally.
The social justice minor is 17 credits. You’ll choose 3 of 4 core courses (11 credits) and 6 credits of elective courses.
Questions?
If you have questions about SSW minors, contact Rae Dillon, Academic Advisor.
Learn to work with youth
Learn to work with youth in a wide variety of fields, including educational settings, human services agencies, county and state programs, and community and nonprofit organizations.
The youth studies minor builds on over 30 years of work done by the Center for Youth Development and Research and the youth studies program in the School of Social Work. This flexible 16-credit minor begins with a core class in youth studies and allows you to customize electives to suit how you plan to work with and understand youth.
Questions?
If you have questions about SSW minors, contact Rae Dillon, Academic Advisor.
Learn how to respond to violent behavior
Family violence can affect anyone in our communities, and includes partner abuse, child maltreatment, and the abuse of elders and vulnerable adults. Knowing how to respond to not only the immediate aftermath of family violence, but also to the more complex needs of family members is critical in schools, clinics, and workplaces.
The family violence prevention minor strengthens your educational experience with both a research base and practical skills in preventing family violence. This minor best compliments career paths related to social services, education, health care, and other direct service fields.
Three foundation courses focus on research related to violent behavior, relationships between violence in society and violence within families, and different professional responses to violence. You will add 6 elective credits to integrate this study further into your major or other fields of interest.
Questions?
If you have questions about SSW minors, contact Rae Dillon, Academic Advisor.
Quote from Chufue Lo, BS in Youth Studies '26
Being part of social work and youth studies has really shifted my perspective from viewing things in a deficit based lens, where I was constantly asking "What's missing?" or "What don't they have?", and now viewing things in an asset based lens where I'm able to work with young people and they're able to brainstorm ideas on how they can support their communities.
Undergraduate courses
You don't need to be in the minors to take any of these classes; we welcome all University of Minnesota undergraduates to join our courses and learn about social justice, youth development, and family violence prevention.
Here are the undergraduate courses offered by the School of Social Work:
- SW 1501: Introduction to Peace Studies
Peace studies is an interdisciplinary field that considers questions such as how human conflicts can be resolved in ways that promote justice/peace. Learn definitions, conditions, and causes of violence, nonviolence, war, and peace between nations, groups, or individuals.
MW 4-5:15pm | 3 cr | Shari Robinson, MSW, Senior Director, Inclusive Excellence - CCAPS | Meets Global Perspectives requirement - SW 2501W: Introduction to Social Justice
We’ll consider the meaning of power, privilege, and oppression, and what it means to pursue “social justice.” Topics we will cover include: paradigm transferals towards liberation; repression and State violence; white saviorism; and neoliberalism in everyday life. By studying activists and their organizations, we will explore how activism is connected to citizenship, democracy, and our own healing.
F 10:40am-1:40pm | 4 cr | Nate Whittaker, M.Ed., Teaching Specialist, UMN | Meets Race, Power & Justice and Lower Division Writing Intensive - SW 3701: Introduction to Child Maltreatment: Intervention and Prevention
This course is an introduction to the study of child maltreatment for students interested in working with children, their families and/or child welfare policies. Learn about child abuse/neglect as form of family violence. Addresses the prevalence, scope, dynamics, responses, and prevention strategies. Individual, familial, and community analyses are utilized.
M 1:55-4:25pm | 3 cr | Katie Erickson, MSW, Child Protection Investigator, Hennepin County - SW 3702: Introduction to Adult Intimate Partner Violence: Intervention and Prevention
This course focuses on the intervention/prevention of intimate partner violence within the U.S. We will examine the ways in which issues of gender, race, culture, age, ability, SES, sexual orientation, immigration, and colonization inform research, theories, and interventions. Includes 30 hours of service learning.
T + Th 1:30-2:45pm | 3 cr | Jen Witt, MSW, Teaching Specialist, UMN - SW 3703: Gender Violence in Global Perspective
This course examines gender based violence (GBV) which can include: sexual assault, sex trafficking, FGM, forced marriage, and other topics. Using an international human rights lens along with other theories useful in understanding GBV students will learn about different approaches to address and prevent GBV. Students spend up to 15 hours in experiential learning at a local court based organization (organized by instructors).
W 5:30-8pm | 3 cr | taught by Ash Taylor-Gouge, MA, Executive Director of the MN Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MNCASA)
Here are the School of Social Work courses in the Youth Studies minor:
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YOST 1001: Seeing Youth, Thinking Youth
You will leave this course better able to notice the young people around you; wonder about them and their lives; name and analyze what you see, hear, and read about youth. Together, we will examine myths and stereotypes about youth, where they come from, and how to deconstruct them using a variety of lenses.
2 sections | 3 cr | Meets Civic Life & Ethics requirement - YOST 2101: Urban Youth and Youth Issues
We critically examine what the term “urban youth” means, its evolution over time, and its use as a code word with implicit association and within this context how urban youth have been studied, problematized and worked with. Using a critical Youth Studies framework, we seek to understand young people’s opportunities, struggles, their interaction with institutions and their identities. We then rethink new directions.
T & TH 12:50-2:45pm | 4 cr | Leo Howard, M.Ed., Program Manager, United Way | Meets Race Power & Justice theme - YOST 3001: Intro to History & Philosophy of Youthwork
Exploring various historic and philosophical origins of “normal” childhood, we unveil the way our modern understandings of child, youth, and adolescent draw upon a history of sexist, colonialist, and racist science.
M & W | 10:40-12:35pm | John Gwinn, M.Ed., Educational Specialist, UMN | Meets Race, Power & Justice AND Historical Perspectives requirements - YOST 3032/5032: Adolescent & Youth Development for Youth Workers
This class explores the multitude of theories that have been proposed to describe, understand, and explain young people in the second decade of life and beyond. We also discuss the social/cultural events that influenced each theory’s development and often demise. A major goal of this class is to better understand where these theories come from, what they are connected to, and often how they are used to both support and marginalize young people.
M & W 8:30-10:25am | 4 cr | Deena Zubulake, M.Ed., COO, Mind the G.A.P.P. - YOST 4301/5301: Communicating with Adolescents About Sexuality
Participants will explore a variety of adolescent sexual issues with a focus on healthy adolescent relationships, sexual development, gender, sexual orientation, and diversity. With this perspective as a base, other topics will include body image, laws regarding teens, sexual health and disease, dating and sexual violence, sexuality and cyberspace, and professional and ethical boundaries in working with youth.
M & W 8:45-10am | 3 cr | Dr. KC Harrison, Senior Lecturer in Youth Studies - YOST 4317: Youth Work in Contested Spaces
Do youth workers require different competencies to work in a “world that has been made strange through the desolating experience of violence and loss?” This course begins with deeply understanding the idea of “contested” and how it shapes youth work practice. We will read about, research, and talk to others who have worked in contested spaces. The course ends by describing and developing an understanding of youth work in current and post-violently divided societies internationally.
T & TH | 1:30-2:45pm | 3 cr | Dr. Ross Velure Roholt, Associate Professor in Youth Studies
Youth studies faculty
Molly Rojas Collins
Director of Undergraduate Studies; Senior Teaching Specialist
Ross VeLure Roholt
Associate Professor; Director, Youth Development Leadership Program
Katie Johnston-Goodstar
Associate Professor