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How NKU’s Social Work Program Tripled Their Annual Placements Without Increasing Staff

Northern Kentucky University’s (NKU) social work program began looking for a solution to manage its placement process.

Over three years, NKU grew its social work field placements 200%, from 200 to 600 students annually.

Placement management resources stayed flat throughout program growth.

NKU is poised to grow its program while maintaining current staff levels.

The Situation

Northern Kentucky University’s (NKU) social work program began looking for a solution to manage its field placement process. Like many social work programs, it used a homemade system combining paper and digital-based forms. This system was inefficient for staff, students, and supervisors. It made tracking and reporting accreditation and student data difficult and time-consuming.

Northern Kentucky University

Northern Kentucky University’s School of Social Work is a fully accredited CSWE program in Highland Heights, Kentucky. It offers online and hybrid courses for students pursuing a Master of Social Work degree.

Impact

The inefficient system meant significant staff time incurred to manage field placements, compile and track data, and communicate with site supervisors. This manual work led to inflexibility for student placements – needing to restart the process if a change was requested. Many student forms were paper-based, requiring them to redo and resubmit. Communication with site supervisors was delayed, with emails ending in spam folders. Collecting and managing data was time-consuming and disorganized without a centralized system.

My favorite things about InPlace Software are the ability to impersonate students for troubleshooting, the ease of approving placements, and the system’s flexibility for tracking supervisors and assessments. The system has streamlined (our) approval processes and placement tracking. InPlace has made it easier to gather and submit data for accreditation purposes.

Kelly Fallon,
Director of Social Work, NKU

The Field Placement Resolution

InPlace provides a comprehensive platform to manage field placements, supervisor information, and assessments. With a combination of online and in-person students, utilizing InPlace’s web-based system helped optimize student workflow tasks. Specifically, InPlace made tracking and approving placements easier, enabling NKU to grow placements from 200 to 600 annually. As a team of one, and with the help of InPlace Software, Kelly has successfully scaled their program placements. She now conducts orientations, approves self-placement forms, monitors evaluations, and quickly addresses troubleshooting issues.

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