School of Social Work

No. 28 M.S.W. Program in the U.S.

Brittany Watson, a December 2022 M.S.W. graduate. (Photo: Tom Kojcsich, Enterprise Marketing and Communications)

Brittany Watson will graduate Dec. 10 with her Master of Social Work degree, having focused on the clinical concentration through the M.S.W. Program online format. Her plans are to expand her birth doula business to offer more services to expecting parents and newborns.

It’s the culmination of a career change after she earned two B.S. degrees (psychology; health, physical education and exercise science) from VCU in 2013.

“It’s been a lot of bouncing around,” she says. “But I’m here now, and I realized this was where I belonged the whole time; I just need to be redirected a couple of different ways in order to find it.”

Following graduation, Watson worked for health departments throughout Virginia’s Hampton Roads region, focusing on chronic disease management, physical education and health education. She began taking classes in nursing while working full-time, but that career path didn’t come to fruition.

“I basically had to reroute everything,” she says, which led to her enrolling in the M.S.W. Program in 2019. Her advice to students pursuing their dreams is that they can overcome obstacles if they “stay the course. A redirection is not a failure, and it took me a very long time to learn that. A redirection is not a failure; it’s just rerouting you into what your purpose is.”

»  See the full story at VCU News.

Categories Alumni, Community, Education
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