Virginia Olivas, MSW
Assistant Professor, Field Education, L.A. DCFS Stipend Coordinator, MSW Program, Department of Social Work
Virginia Olivas, MSW, is in her ninth year as a member of the Azusa Pacific University field practicum faculty in the MSW program. She serves as the program coordinator of the LA DCFS Child Welfare Program. Olivas teaches practicum classes for the full-time generalist foundation year cohort as well as the generalist foundation year child welfare supplemental seminar class. As a bilingual and bicultural social worker, Olivas has over twenty-five years of experience in child welfare, with a specialization in adoptions and working with the Latino community. For twelve years, she supervised MSW students from various local universities. Olivas has a background as a program manager for a nonprofit resource family agency, as well as working as a permanency-planning mediator, where she mediated post-adoption contact agreements to honor connections for adoptees with their birth families. Olivas is passionate about child welfare both as a professional and an adoptive parent.
Education
- MSW, California State University, Long Beach
- BA, Communication Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
Academic Area
- School of Behavioral Sciences
Expertise
- Child Welfare
Courses Taught
- SOCW 517 – Generalist Practicum I
- SOCW 518 – Generalist Practicum II
- SOCW 351 – Child Welfare