Faculty with practice experience: The new dinosaurs in the social work academy?

Two parallel trends in the social work academy have the potential to threaten the existence of faculty with practice expertise. First, the Council on Social Work Education has significantly lowered the level of practice experience needed by instructors who teach practice courses. The second trend, related to the empirical practice movement, is the apparent overshadowing of research over practice in social work academe (especially at doctoral-granting institutions). Taken together, these shifts could result in a paucity of tenured/tenure-track practice teaching faculty who are involved in decisions related to curriculum development, tenure and promotion, and research. Consequently, social work education runs the risk of being disconnected from contemporary practice and unintegrated with theory and research.