Virginia Olivas, MSW
Assistant Professor, Field Education, L.A. DCFS Stipend Coordinator, MSW Program, Department of Social Work
Virginia Olivas, MSW, is in her 11th year as a member of the Azusa Pacific University practicum faculty in the MSW program. She is the program coordinator of the LA DCFS/UCLA Academy of Workforce Excellence Child Welfare Stipend Program. She teaches the child welfare class for the BSW program, Generalist Practicum I and II for the generalist foundation year MSW cohort, and the generalist foundation year DCFS Child Welfare Foundation I, II, and III courses. As a bilingual and bicultural social worker, Olivas has more than 25 years of experience in child welfare, with specialization in adoptions and working with the Latino community. For 12 years she also supervised MSW students from various local universities, and has a background as a program manager for a nonprofit resource family agency. She continues to work as a permanency-planning mediator of post-adoption contact agreements, which serve to honor connections for adoptees with their birth families. She is passionate about child welfare as a professional and as an adoptive parent.
Education
- MSW, California State University, Long Beach, 1997
- BA, Communication Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 1992
Academic Area
- School of Behavioral Sciences
Expertise
- Child Welfare
- Practicum Education
Courses Taught
- SOCW 351 – Child Welfare
- SOCW 517 – Generalist Practicum I
- SOCW 518 – Generalist Practicum II
- SOCW 577 – Child Welfare Foundations I
- SOCW 578 – Child Welfare Foundations II
- SOCW 579 – Child Welfare Foundations III