Its focus is to prepare graduates to become agents of social change through direct practice, agency management, policymaking, and leading new discoveries that address the grand challenges confronting society.

Professor Jessica Blanche Peixotto, the second woman to earn at Ph.D. at Berkeley, was hired in 1904 to teach courses in sociology and by 1912 had shaped a curriculum in social economics focused on the poor.

Along with her colleagues, Lucy Ward Stebbins and Emily Noble Plehn, they developed a graduate-level curriculum in social work that same year.

By 1927 these courses led to certificates in child and family services and in medical social work.

An independent Department of Social Welfare was established in 1939 and the certificates were replaced with a professional Master of Arts degree in 1942.