Elizabeth Segal, MSW, PhD, is a professor at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. She is a social policy analyst with a background in professional social work. Her current research centers on social empathy and how greater empathic insight can lead to the creation of more effective social welfare policies and programs. She has published 12 books and numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on social welfare issues, with recent emphasis on interpersonal and social empathy. Faculty profile.
MSW Online
Please share with us how you got started in social work.
Elizabeth Segal
Well, I didn’t get there as a direct route. I actually had never met a social worker (to my knowledge) and I was a student studying sociology and religious studies. And when I graduated I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I knew that I wanted “to do” sociology as opposed to being a sociologist. In the sense that I loved understanding how society worked and how people interacted, but I knew I didn’t want to be in big databases or looking at populations. I wanted to do the work. I put together social work as an idea that, “Oh, that’s like doing sociology.”
And in those days, the internet didn’t exist, there was no searching in that way, and so to learn more I wrote to schools of social work for their brochures. I read up on them and I became really connected to the idea that this is what I wanted to do. So, I applied to schools of social work. One of them in particular talked about doing urban work and that was Boston University, which is where I went to school. So it was what I thought I liked on paper, and within the first month I was positive I was in the right place. I’ve never looked back.
MSW Online
That is awesome. The opposite happens to many people I bet. They might get started with something and within the first week think, “This is not for me.”
Elizabeth Segal
Well, I had a lot of wrong turns. If I told you how many majors I had in college … I entered as a biology major. I looked at special education and I was going to go into working in religious practice. I mean, I tried a lot of things before I figured out what I would do. I stumbled upon sociology my junior year and luckily I fell in love with it and just that’s all I did for two years in college, majoring in it. It was not a direct route in that regard but it wasn’t what I thought I would study let’s put it that way. But once I went to grad school I started my MSW studies, I felt like I fit.
MSW Online
Do you remember, was there a moment or was there a class or a concept or something that made it click for you?
Elizabeth Segal
Well, one of my sociology classes involved a field component. It was an urban sociology class and we had to go into the communities, interview people, and learn about the community. There was a small group of us. We were given options but we picked a community that for whatever reason no one else in our class did.
And we went to what would be like a neighborhood council and people were just so nice to us and wanted to tell their story. I will say that that community had really good cafes before there were a lot of them out there. And so we would sit and have coffee and talk to people and it hooked me on what I now know to be the community work that I did as a social worker. But at the time I didn’t know that in my sociology class. So, that probably was the moment. And the instructor was wonderful. She was a great professor and really a role model. So, that probably was the moment but I didn’t know it because I didn’t call it social work then.
MSW Online
Very interesting. Is that considered ethnographic research?
Elizabeth Segal
That was definitely ethnographic research, we just didn’t call it that. We did a neighborhood analysis and we were looking at the way they had built a highway 20 years before, cutting the neighborhood off and it was a poor neighborhood. So we were looking at more of the sociological dimensions and because we were the only group in that neighborhood, we hung out having coffee after every time. We went to a meeting and the people were just really nice and talked to us. So we probably did more one-on-one conversations, and that’s probably what hooked me, but like I said I didn’t know it at the time.
MSW Online
Right. People must have really felt how much you cared. Now walk us through the next steps in your career path.
Elizabeth Segal
Well, it actually started in my MSW program. We had a really good set of lectures the very first month to teach us all what social work actually was. We had courses that stressed micro, macro, and meso. I jumped on board doing very clinical work. That seemed to be “real” social work because that was what was popular with my classmates. My first field placement and my initial work was in a behavioral health center. I always knew I wanted to work with young people and this role was with children and families.
Initially, I went the clinical route helping families, but it didn’t fit for me long term and I didn’t feel comfortable. And at the same time I was taking group work and community organizing classes and fell in love with the settlement movement in my readings. I actually fell in love with my policy class (which surprised me) and no one else liked it as much as I did. I could live without going in the field but I really wanted to go to my social welfare policy class.
And I loved macro but I didn’t know that. My second year field placement was in Boston and there were a number of settlement houses that had been around for decades. Some dated back to the very early 1900’s turn of the century. They had morphed and changed but the principle of settlements (working in communities) was still very strong. And so I did my second year field placement in a settlement house and that was it. I was hooked. I realized I’m a macro person, I really like community work, but I also really liked policy. So, we have to park that for a moment.
After I got my MSW and graduated, I was lucky enough to work with an organization that did community outreach to youth and their families, primarily adolescents, which I loved and I did the community organizing and programs. I really liked that but I had this policy itch. I just loved social welfare policy and I didn’t know how to do it. We didn’t learn how to do policy in the sense of policy advocacy, we learned how to study it. So for me when in doubt go back to school. And at that point I had moved. I actually was from the Midwest, from Chicago, so I had moved back for family reasons and had been working there for a couple of years with my MSW. Then I applied to the Jane Addams College of Social Work because, again, I was still hooked on this settlement concept and here was a school of social work named after the foremost famous social worker and settlement worker, Jane Addams. The school’s commitment followed what I was interested in, community.
So, I went back to school and I really wanted to study social policy. When you’re in a doctoral program you have to do research (which I was interested in) but you pick your area of expertise. And so, I took political science classes. I took an urban studies class. I took quite a few macro type courses that I could find at the graduate level and put together what was for me a PhD from a school of social work but in social policy.
MSW Online
Oh, very cool. Can you explain what the term settlement house means?
Elizabeth Segal
Okay. So, the settlement house movement was begun at the turn of the century. It was actually out of England where the original model was that young men who all grew up privileged in university needed to understand how other people lived. They started programs, one was called Toynbee Hall, where they literally lived in the neighborhood to learn about it. Obviously not a neighborhood they grew up in. And it took off and started a movement. The very first settlement house was in New York City called Henry Street Settlement. And the workers were what we would call middle-class but they lived in the community. They settled, hence the term settlement house, and they would run social services.
And the second one, which became the most famous, was run by Jane Addams in Chicago. It was called the Hull House because it was a rundown mansion that was donated by the Hull family on the West side of Chicago, where a lot of immigrant groups lived. It was a poor area. Jane Addams herself moved in. What’s really cool is that it’s now a museum and it’s on the campus of the University of Illinois in Chicago where I studied. So you could go to the Hull House. It was preserved as a museum when they built the university and it’s right next to the student union. You can go there anytime you want. So it’s very cool.
The movement’s heyday was really the 1920s or so, from the 1890s to 1920s. There were over 400 settlement houses throughout the country, mostly in the Northeast and the Midwest. There were virtually none in the South. There was even one I found when I came here to Phoenix when I was doing field liaison work at an agency here. The movement was very robust during the progressive era.
MSW Online
That is so interesting.
Elizabeth Segal
Yeah, it was very cool. In fact, the settlement house that I was a student intern at, my second year field placement, was big so we had quite a few students. The director was one of the last settlement directors who lived on the property but he said it just got too intense. He had no privacy. He moved off the property but he had two kids who were in their twenties who also worked there at the settlement house. There was an apartment and they lived there. There was someone 24 hours a day who worked at the settlement house on the property. So, it still kept some of the “settle” part of it.
MSW Online
So, back to your PhD. You’re in Chicago and start there.
Elizabeth Segal
I was studying social welfare policy and I loved it and I wanted to go work in government. I wanted to do policy advocacy. I wanted to make a difference and still be a social worker. I wanted to tell policymakers about the perspective of people that social workers work with and see if I could influence policy. There was an internship in the city of Chicago in city government that intrigued me, but my advisor (who was absolutely right and brilliant) said, “Don’t do anything until after you finish because I’ve seen too many people who wander off and don’t finish their dissertation.”
So I took her word for it but I also needed to support myself and the school offered teaching assistantships which kept me funded. So, I went into the classroom not with any intent to teach long term, but because it paid the bills basically. I mean, it was a good opportunity and I was intrigued but my burning passion at that time was to go work in government. But I started teaching and was blown away how much I loved it. And so, I was teaching and that set the course when I finished to say “Well, I’m going to apply to be a professor. I think I love this.” Since my very first teaching job, which was a long time ago, I have taught social welfare policy as the foundation master’s course. I’ve taught social welfare policy just about every year of my career, everywhere I’ve taught, and I still teach it to this day.
MSW Online
That must require you to stay current and involved. So do you feel like you’re getting that fulfillment of doing policy because you probably have to stay really up to speed with it in order to teach it?
Elizabeth Segal
Well, I didn’t quite get rid of that urge early on. While teaching at the University of Illinois, I applied for a congressional fellowship where I actually went out to Washington DC and worked on the Hill as a congressional science fellow. I was so convinced that I was still going to do macro policy hands-on even though I loved teaching. I was sponsored by the Society for Research and Child Development as a fellow and I worked on the Hill.
I was in the office of Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland. She was actually the only MSW in Congress, which is why I wanted to work for her. I also spent half of my year working at the Illinois state level of government and that was fascinating. This was before the internet so getting my hands on government documents and getting information firsthand, going to congressional hearings, and being involved… I was a fellow so I was not the highest level ranking person but you’re really involved in the making of policy on the ground by going to meetings and hearing how they’re doing it. And I actually discovered I didn’t like it. I loved studying it but not “the doing” of it.
Elizabeth Segal
I missed teaching though. I figured I’ve got this great congressional fellowship year. It’s a one-year program. I’m going to apply and go back to teaching. But I made a deal with myself that I would teach at a state capitol when I was done. I wanted to teach at the university level but I thought I could do more laboratory work with students if I’m at a state capitol. Which of course then limits your job opportunities, but I was lucky and I ended up at Ohio State University which is in Columbus, Ohio, which is the state capital. And the school of social work there had a good relationship with people in government. I spent a number of years there and then was recruited actually to come out to Phoenix where I am now, the Arizona State University, the school of social work here and it’s also a state capitol.
I’ve managed my whole career (we’re talking 34 years that I’ve been a professor) to do enough policy hands-on to realize I like being an advocate and teaching about it but the making of policy – it’s very messy. You don’t get what you want because you have to compromise. And it’s very political. I didn’t care about running for office or people campaigning. I wasn’t a political person in that regard. And so, teaching has been the perfect place for me.
MSW Online
Sounds like that fellowship allowed you to continue to be a subject matter expert without the politics.
Elizabeth Segal
Right. During my fellowship, I learned where the sources were and how to get them. It was incredibly valuable and gave me a real boost in terms of research matter. And so, I could stay up on policy, and now it’s much easier with the internet, but I could stay up on policy without being in Washington DC. I made contacts and stayed in touch with people and I went back probably once a year to do hands-on research in Washington. So that year there was incredibly valuable and actually helped me become a better researcher and a better teacher.
MSW Online
Sounds like the variety of experiences you had really helped shape your career and teaching.
Elizabeth Segal
The theme that runs through it, which is why social work is such a great training, is it’s experiential learning. For me I was able to make every big decision after I got my “in” – on the ground and when I switched what I thought I was going to do it was because I saw what it was really like. My research today in terms of studying empathy, social empathy, and its relation to policy, the key is experiential learning. I lived a life of experiential learning and every time I did, I got clarity and new direction.
MSW Online
In that same vein of taking advantage of experiential learning, is there anything else that you would say in terms of advice to people considering social work or new in the field?
Elizabeth Segal
First, about experiential learning. It doesn’t matter where you go for your MSW because field experience is part of the national standards. We have a great program. In fact I’ve moved to instruction online, so I think we have a great online program too, but it doesn’t matter where you go to get your MSW in terms of the requirement. You will have field placements. And ideally if you don’t already have a bachelor’s in social work you’re going to have two field placements. And I really encourage people to approach those experiences with the mindset of wanting to learn what they’re interested in but also what they’re not interested in.
In that sense, trying different things can really open the door. And in an MSW program you have to do all those hours of field internship and it’s a great way to figure out what you want to do. It’s also a great way to train. Hands-on training is a wonderful way to learn how to practice skills. There are a lot of fields that social workers are in and all MSW programs require field work and have required it long before other programs figured out the benefit of experiential learning. Programs agreed “We should have a volunteer component or a field experience component.” Social work education is built on that experience.
MSW Online
What does the future look like for social work?
Elizabeth Segal
Well, I’ve always said that if we could put ourselves out of business, think how wonderful the world would be but unfortunately there’s just great need for social work which speaks to how important the profession is and that people can find employment. The one thing though that I really like to share with students is that the greatest thing about being a social worker… Well, there’s two great things. One is the mission that we actually are helping people and trying to build a better world. As corny as it sounds that is our mission. And so, I find having a mission like that under a profession really makes me feel like I’m doing valuable work.
And the second thing is that it’s the graduate training that allows you to do a multitude of things. We’re not as tightly defined as other professions. For example, if you went into medicine, you most likely would go into a specialization or even law you’d be specialized. You likely would not be able to flip to something else during your career or at least not easily. But in social work, people have a base of skills that you can work with different populations. You can work in different areas, and while you will become more specialized, it isn’t impossible to take that specialization and try new things. I’ve always found it’s a really expansive field of employment. Also, not just a necessary one, but also a very valuable one.
MSW Online
Anything else you’d like to add?
Elizabeth Segal
The one project I might still do some day is: I have always wanted to track backwards people’s careers in social work. I’ll meet students who I haven’t seen in 10, 20 years, and they’ll be doing something and I’ll look puzzled. And they say, “Well, this is how I got here.” And it all makes sense because I have quite a few students here in Arizona who are in government including a U.S. senator. Our U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema was one of our social work students. She holds a JD as well, she’s quite phenomenal, but she very gladly speaks highly of her MSW years and she was in the field doing social work. I was a field liaison and had students placed with her and now she’s a United States Senator. And our secretary of state in Arizona is a former MSW student of ours. These are incredible pathways I share when people ask me particularly about macro social work. I can say for a fact that I have former students who are in government, who are elected officials. Also people behind the scenes running domestic violence shelters or homeless shelters, running bigger agencies, foster care. Such a variety of things in addition to all of those in direct practice.
MSW Online
That is very, very cool and I’m sure that’s gratifying to see them succeed and hear their stories.
Elizabeth Segal
Yeah, no, it’s great. And really, Kyrsten Sinema is such a great story. When I was much younger and serving as a congressional fellow in Barbara Mikulski’s office, she was the only one in Congress with an MSW. Now there’s a dozen of them at least. And that’s because I do macro but there’s people who teach clinical practice who can tell you about former students doing amazing things because they found their path and you can keep growing in social work. I think you can really expand and try different things with your MSW.
MSW Online
Thank you so much for sharing your story and advice.
Elizabeth Segal
Well, my pleasure. It’s a profession that I’ve never looked back from. I found my home so I hope other people will do as well. If I can help a little bit in that I’m happy to! Thank you for the opportunity.