LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 6, 2026) — When the University of Kentucky College of Social Work (CoSW) launched its online Doctor of Social Work (DSW) program in 2020, it did so in response to a growing need.
Across Kentucky and the nation, communities were facing increasingly complex challenges including child abuse and neglect, substance use, mental health concerns, poverty, and workforce shortages across the helping professions. The college designed the DSW program to help meet that moment by preparing advanced social work practitioners to lead in clinical practice, applied research, administrative leadership, and other critical areas of service.
Now, the program has reached another important milestone.
The DSW program has achieved candidacy for accreditation by the Council on Social Work Education’s Board of Accreditation. The designation marks a significant step in the program’s progress toward initial accreditation and reflects its continued commitment to quality, rigor, and innovation in doctoral social work education.
“This milestone reflects the intentionality, rigor and innovation that have shaped our program from the beginning,” said Laura Escobar-Ratliff, DSW program director. “Our faculty and staff have worked thoughtfully to build a high-quality online doctoral experience that prepares advanced social work practitioners to lead change in their organizations, communities and fields of practice.”
The DSW program was created with working practitioners in mind. Offered fully online, the program allows students to advance their careers while continuing to serve their communities. Through doctoral-level coursework and applied capstone research, students strengthen their leadership, scholarship, and practice expertise. The program culminates in the Annual Virtual Showcase of DSW Scholars, a multi-day event featuring student research and free continuing education opportunities for attendees.
The candidacy designation is the latest in a series of milestones for the program.
In recent years, the college launched the Sport Social Work Concentration within the DSW program – the first programmatic offering of its kind. Designed in response to the growing mental health needs of athletes and athletic communities, the concentration prepares doctoral-level social workers to provide support in athletic environments and to explore the strategic use of sport as a therapeutic and community-building intervention.
The program also earned Quality Matters certification for its core curriculum, as well as its clinical practice, military behavioral health, sport social work and social work education concentrations.
Together, the milestones point to a program that has grown from first-of-its-kind into a nationally distinctive model for advanced social work education.
“When this program launched, we recognized a clear and urgent need: social challenges were becoming more complex, and the profession needed more social workers prepared to lead at the highest levels of practice,” said Jay Miller, dean of CoSW. “The DSW program was built in response to that need. It expands access to advanced social work education, strengthens the workforce and prepares practitioners to improve systems that directly affect people’s lives. Achieving CSWE candidacy status is an important milestone in that work and a reflection of the rigor, innovation and intentionality that have guided this program from the beginning.”
Students admitted to candidate programs in the fall (or later) of the 2025-2026 academic year will be retroactively recognized as graduates from a CSWE-BOA accredited program as long as the program attains initial accreditation.
For more information about the UK College of Social Work’s Doctor of Social Work program, visit https://online.uky.edu/doctoral/social-work/dsw.