From BSW to MSW: Kayla Bueby’s Journey and Insights on Social Work Education

Welcome to "Victors in Grad School," a podcast where we engage in enlightening conversations with students, alumni, and experts to uncover what it takes to excel in graduate school. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, the podcast is a valuable resource for anyone contemplating, currently enrolled in, or nearing the completion of their graduate studies. In a recent episode, Dr. Lewis had the pleasure of hosting Kayla Bueby, a Clinical Assistant Professor and Practicum Education Coordinator at the University of Michigan Flint. Kayla shared her transformative journey through various stages of her academic career, from her Bachelor's in Social Work (BSW) to her Master's in Social Work (MSW), and even a postgraduate certificate in Business Administration.

Understanding the Importance of Graduate Education

Graduate education is often a journey filled with numerous transitions and challenges. These changes could range from shifts in self-perception to evolving learning methodologies. Dr. Lewis emphasizes that graduate school is a unique journey that requires comprehensive preparation to ensure success. The goal of the podcast is to aid students at various stages of their graduate education by bringing in guests who have successfully navigated this journey and are willing to share their wisdom.

The Initial Transition: From BSW to MSW

Kayla Bueby began her academic climb at Saginaw Valley State University, where she earned her BSW. She then transitioned to Michigan State University for her MSW. When asked about the motives behind her decision to pursue an MSW, Kayla mentioned the defining role her undergraduate faculty played. They provided her with clarity about the importance of advanced degrees in the field of social work, especially for those aiming to become mental health therapists. She knew that a master's degree was a crucial stepping stone to achieving her career goals, and this understanding came early in her bachelor's program, largely due to the guidance she received from her mentors.

Navigating Graduate School Choices

Choosing a graduate school is no small feat, and Kayla conducted rigorous research to identify the best MSW programs available. She acknowledged the pivotal role that professional organizations like the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) played in her search process. By joining NASW as a student member, she gained access to a wealth of resources, continuing education opportunities, and crucial insights into the hot topics and future directions in the field of social work. This experience was instrumental in her decision to attend Michigan State University, which offered a specialized trauma-informed care certificate as part of their MSW program.

The Unexpected Yet Beneficial Addition of Business Knowledge In a fascinating twist, Kayla didn't stop at her MSW. She ventured into the realm of business by earning a postgraduate certificate in Business Administration and Management. Initially intrigued by the possibility of blending social work with business, she aimed for an MBA but settled on the certificate after realizing that her strengths did not align perfectly with certain business courses like accounting. Despite these challenges, the experience was invaluable, and the knowledge she gained has continued to benefit her career.

Coping with the Realities of Graduate Life

As someone who has worked extensively with both undergraduate and graduate students, Kayla shared valuable insights into coping with the multifaceted challenges of graduate life. Time management, she pointed out, is a universal stressor among graduate students who often juggle school, work, and personal responsibilities. She advocated for a customized approach to time management, highlighting the importance of finding what works best for an individual's unique circumstances. 

Kayla also stressed the importance of leveraging available resources for mental health support. For instance, institutions like the University of Michigan Flint offer free counseling and psychological services to students, including remote options. Utilizing these resources can make a substantial difference in a student's overall well-being and academic performance.

Transitioning to a Faculty Role: A Full-Circle Moment

Kayla's journey came full circle as she transitioned from an administrative role to a faculty position. She is particularly excited about the launch of the new MSW program at the University of Michigan Flint. Having transitioned multiple times herself, she now aims to be the empathetic, knowledgeable guide for her students that she once sought in her mentors. She hopes to provide her students with the skills and empathy needed to navigate the complexities of real-world social work.

Final Tips for Aspiring Graduate Students

In wrapping up, Kayla shared some critical advice for those considering graduate education: "Start with the end in mind." It's essential to have a clear understanding of your career goals and to ensure that the graduate program you choose aligns well with those objectives. Don't hesitate to reach out to faculty, program directors, and current students to gather as much information as possible. This proactive approach can help ensure that you make informed decisions that will set you on the path to a rewarding professional life.

Graduate school is a demanding but incredibly rewarding journey. By leveraging the experiences and insights of those who have successfully navigated this path, like Kayla Bueby, future students can better prepare themselves for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

For more insights and tips on navigating graduate education, tune into "Victors in Grad School" and embark on your own journey to success.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the victors in grad school, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]:
Welcome back to Victor's in Grad School. I'm your host, doctor Christopher Lewis, director of graduate programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. This week as always, we are on a journey together. I say that every week, but it's so true that you are thinking about graduate school. You're here because you're thinking about graduate school, And you might be just at that first inkling where you think, maybe I need to continue my education. You might be in graduate school, or you might be looking at the light at the end of the tunnel where you're saying, I'm almost done. Almost ready for taking this graduate education to the next step and moving into a new career area or expanding in the current career that you're in.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:55]:
No matter where you are, you are on a journey. And as you go through this graduate school experience, you're going to be going through a lot of changes, a lot of changes in yourself, changes in the way that you learn, changes in the way that you are looking at yourself as an employee, as a student, as a individual. So it's really important that you do what you can to prepare yourself, to prepare yourself for the work that you're going to be doing throughout your graduate school journey. And that's what this show is all about. This show is all about helping you to find ways in which you can find success in that graduate school journey. That's why every week I bring you different guests, different people that can help you do just that. And I love being able to bring you these different people that have had these different experiences because they have gone before you. They have gone.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:50]:
They have gotten a graduate degree. They've been successful, and they're sharing that experience with you today. Today, we've got another great guest with us. Kayla Bubi is with us today, and Kayla is a clinical assistant professor for our b for the BSW and MSW programs here at the University of Michigan Flint. She's also the practicum education coordinator for those programs as well. We're gonna be talking to her about her own experience going through graduate school herself and learning along the way. Really excited to have her here. Kayla, thanks so much for being here.

Kayla Bueby [00:02:22]:
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:23]:
It is my pleasure having you here today. I love being able to bring people in to be able to talk about their different experiences, to share those experiences and help people along the way. 1st and foremost, one of the things that I love doing is turning the clock back in time. And I wanna go back a few years. I wanna go back because I know that you did your undergraduate work at Saginaw Valley State University where you got your BSW, your bachelor of social work. And after that, you went on to get an MSW, a master of social work at Michigan State University. So let's first talk about that first transition. And I would love to kind of go into your mind and say to yourself, Kate, what were the reasons that you chose that you wanted to continue on in getting going from the BSW to the MSW?

Kayla Bueby [00:03:07]:
Yeah. That's a great question. My my BSW experience at Saginaw Valley was wonderful. And in that program, I learned so much about the particulars of each of the degrees. So in certain professions, your degree means a lot in terms of what you're able to do. And in social work, that's very true. So I had the goal of becoming a mental health therapist and becoming a clinician, and I knew I needed to achieve a master's degree and earn a master's degree in order to do that. And I had wonderful faculty that helped me understand that path and prepare me for what was next so that I knew very early on in my bachelor's degree program that that was the direction that I was heading in.

Kayla Bueby [00:03:48]:
That was incredibly helpful. So in a social work degree program, the job that you want to do has a ton of bearing on what level of degree you need, and that was made so clear to me early on, and I really appreciated that. So that's how I ended up knowing that I wanted to continue on with my master's degree education very early on in my bachelor's education.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:11]:
As you learn that and you were talking to your faculty mentors or advisors or others that were saying to you, okay, you wanna do this, you've gotta get this. As you were starting to prepare for that next step, as you were going through that BSW, I'm sure you had to start doing some type of, let's say, reconnaissance, some type of research to be able to look at the myriad of different MSW programs that were out there. And there are quite a few in the state of Michigan, but there's also many others across the nation. And I'm sure you had many opportunities. You could have gone to almost any school that you had wanted to. You chose to go to Michigan State University. Talk to me about that decision making process, that research that you did for yourself. And why did you ultimately decide to attend Michigan State University?

Kayla Bueby [00:05:00]:
Knowing early on in my BSW program that I was interested in pursuing an MSW was a monumental help in that regard. 1 of the from a social work perspective, one of the most impactful things that I did was got connected to my professional membership organization, which in our profession is NASW or the National Association of Social Workers, specifically the Michigan chapter, and became a student member. They offered some really wonderful student member rate, and that got me connected to the practice professional community in a way that I had not been connected to before. They also offered free or reduced cost continuing education offerings and trainings that I was able to take part in as a student. And when I did that, I got to know what the hot topics in the profession were, where was our field heading, what did I need to know about in order to be prepared to not only apply to grad school, but be successful in grad school, and then ultimately be successful as a professional? And one of the things at the time, and certainly now still, that kept coming up was trauma informed care. So I became very interested in trauma informed care, and that was something that was on my mind as I was looking for graduate programs. On a personal note, I had always wanted to attend Michigan State University, so they were already very high on my list. But they also had a trauma informed care certificate program that I was able to take part in and was able to leave my graduate program with this additional certificate that has assisted me in my career ever since.

Kayla Bueby [00:06:31]:
So that was a huge part of that was understanding where your field currently is as a profession, what are the hot topics, what are the latest and greatest evidence based approaches that you should know about as a student, and aligning that with a program that was able to prepare me in that way throughout my master's program to walk into the profession, already a step ahead or maybe 2 steps ahead of some of the other graduates in my field.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:54]:
You just talked about the fact that you learned a lot of those pieces, the hot topics and things that were really important for someone going into the field to know by being a student member of the National Association. There's a number of national associations that are out there for a lot of different career areas. Talk to me about how did you get involved in that national association, and what would you recommend to students that are going into a graduate program to do as they look at national associations, statewide associations, things that are out there that they might be able to find involvement in as well.

Kayla Bueby [00:07:34]:
I became aware of NASW and, to some extent, involved in it because my faculty members spoke so highly of that professional organization. They were truly mentors to me throughout the entire bachelor's degree process. And their feedback and their experiences with the association were something that were that was very helpful for me to understand. And then they created opportunities, sometimes extracurricularly, but also sometimes within our curriculum, in order for the students to get connected to that particular particular organization. So for NASW, for instance, there's an annual legislative advocacy day that students are always welcome to attend, where we're able to go to Lansing and talk to legislators about social work specific policies that are being made or being proposed. So those were wonderful ways for me to get connected. As I mentioned, they also had a a discounted student rate, which made it more affordable for me as a student who is living on a very limited income And many professional organizations offer something similar to make that more accessible to folks who are spending lots of money already on their education, books, and everything else that they might have going on. So I would definitely encourage students to ask faculty what professional organizations are they familiar with, have they found value in, are they members of where social work is pretty cut and dry.

Kayla Bueby [00:08:56]:
NASW is our ultimate professional association, but some professions may have multiple. And so it's worth asking your faculty what they might recommend or what their experiences have been with those organizations if there are multiple.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:10]:
Now I know that you ended up getting another degree outside of the BSW and the MSW, and that was a postgraduate business certificate in business administration and management. And a very different area of study in comparison to what you study for your bachelor's and master's. And for those of you that don't know, a graduate certificate tends to be a core group of courses that you take in a specific targeted area. It might be 9 credits. It might be 12 credits. You know, it's a specific number of courses in that targeted area. So as I mentioned, Kayla, you decided to get a certificate in business administration and management. Talk to me about that. And what made you decide that you wanted to focus and get a different type of experience in this way?

Kayla Bueby [00:09:59]:
Yeah. I think talking about the trauma informed care and trauma informed perspectives that I was interested in early on I also knew that early on I was very interested in management, administration, and leadership within the social work profession as well. As a staff member at the University of Michigan Flint at the time, I was able to take advantage of a wonderful benefit through our institution that was able to support some of my educational pursuits during that time. I was able to take advantage of a wonderful benefit through our institution that was able to support some of my educational pursuits during that time. And I decided I wanted to initially explore an MBA. And joint MSW and MBA degrees are not uncommon. They weren't back then, and they aren't uncommon now, because a lot of social workers do end up in process, and so I ended up ending that my time with that program a little bit early, but was able to complete that post master's certificate. Although not knowledge from those courses that I was able to take, and the faculty were wonderful. I will be the 1st person to say I am not the strongest when it comes to accounting, when it comes to the books, when it comes to the number side of business administration. And countless times when I had questions, faculty were a if I had something that I needed in order to be successful.

Kayla Bueby [00:11:29]:
So I really appreciated my time in that program, and it's continued years later to serve me very well. And I appreciate the opportunity that I was afforded to be able to access that education as well.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:41]:
Now with your bachelor's to master's, your master's to certificate to certificate, there's always transitions when you enter into different programs. How you were taught in your MSW is gonna be different than how you were taught in your business classes, And you have to be able to maneuver and manage those transitions to be successful in graduate school itself. So what did you have to do in each of those degree settings to be able to set yourself up for success? And what did you have to do to maintain your success throughout that journey through those different programs?

Kayla Bueby [00:12:14]:
There are big differences between each of those programs. And one of the things that I wish I would have maybe done differently or been a little bit stronger in doing was understanding that there was no way that I could know before I started those programs exactly what the differences would have been. And I held myself to the standard, this very standard of having to know what it was gonna be like before I even experienced it. That caused me a lot of stress. It caused a lot of anxiety, and it caused a lot of confusion for me. Whereas if I would have taken the learner approach and said, you know what? I can't possibly know what this is gonna be like, and that's okay. I'm not supposed to know. I'm supposed to learn what this is going to be.

Kayla Bueby [00:12:56]:
I think that would have left me open to learning more about what the experience really would be like instead of what I thought it might be like. And in all of those circumstances, as you mentioned, it was a very different experience. The thing that I did to sustain was ask questions because I realized that especially when you continue on to a graduate level education, professors are incredibly invested in your success, or at least that was my experience, especially at U of M Flint. And I they wanted me to ask questions. They were interested in the questions that I had. There was no silly question to them, especially as somebody coming from a different discipline into the business side of things in particular. I had many questions. How what is the culture of this type of profession? How are things typically done? What parallels might I be able to find between the 2? And they were very interested in discussing that.

Kayla Bueby [00:13:51]:
And there are times where, especially even with an MSW degree, you don't necessarily have to have a bachelor's degree to go into that. And so there are plenty of graduate programs where you don't necessarily need to have one particular degree to go into that advanced level degree, and you might find yourself in a similar situation where you're trying to find the parallels. You're you're trying to see how those two worlds blend together, and I strongly recommend leaning on faculty members and your peers maybe who have some experience to really help you integrate your knowledge, which is valuable, into one cohesive educational experience. It's difficult. So understanding that it's going to be a process and that you're not gonna know everything early on, and that that's okay, is a big mindset shift that, as I mentioned, I wish I would have adopted a little bit earlier in my journey.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:39]:
Now I know that you said that going into the MSW, you were interested in trauma informed care. And pretty quickly after getting that MSW, you transitioned into some working in higher education after doing some community based type of work as well. But a lot of your career has really been focused in on working in higher education and working with students. So you have an interesting perspective in that regard of being able to work with students in many different aspects, graduate students, undergraduate students. I would love your perspective, especially with the fact that for a number of years, you worked in the counseling in the counseling area within a college environment and working with students in that capacity. Could you talk to me a little bit about what you learned along the way in working with, we'll say, graduate students in some of the big stressors, some of the things that they were learning with, and some of the things that you might have shared with them to help them to maneuver those situations to be able to come out stronger in the end?

Kayla Bueby [00:15:43]:
Yeah. I think, by and large, one of the common threads with graduate students when I was working in the counseling office, that was a stressor for all of them was, I have a life outside of this. And not just a life, but I might have children. I might have family that I'm taking care of. I might have a full time job. I have a mortgage. I have car notes to pay. There's lots of life happening outside of graduate school, especially when we have students that are coming to us who have made who have already spent time achieving a bachelor's degree or 2 or 3.

Kayla Bueby [00:16:15]:
And then they're also a a person first, and they're coming to us with this incredible amount of life experience. Even if they're right out of undergraduate, they still have more responsibilities, and their life is more complex than it was right out of high school. You can imagine how much more complex it gets if you're bringing somebody in who's maybe a decade, 2, or 3 removed from a bachelor's degree program. So navigating the complexities of managing time was a huge theme in those conversations. And I think while there are some general tips that can be helpful for everybody, what you have to remember is that those general tips weren't designed with you in mind specifically. You have to take those general tips, like having an organized system for managing your time, whether that's a physical planner, a Google Calendar, a Google Doc, whatever that might be for you. You have to make it work for your life. So one of the common things I talked about, especially with some of our students who had a long commute or maybe they had children and they were driving around quite a bit, was thinking about how do we make your learning more appropriate for your style.

Kayla Bueby [00:17:20]:
So our audiobook's something we can we can switch to for you. And so that you have the opportunity to listen while you're driving and really double or triple dipping on the time that you already are using for something else. How can we make this a better experience for you? So really, I think taking the general advice of good time management, staying organized, studying on a regular basis, but making sure that you understand that it can't copy and paste. You have to make that tailored for your individual experience to make it worthwhile. And not everything's gonna work for you. That's okay. The goal is to find what does, And that takes some trial and error in the process. The other big piece of that too was, as a result of that high level of stress, it's a breeding ground for additional mental health concerns.

Kayla Bueby [00:18:05]:
And so, when that happens, being able to access the resources that are available to you are incredibly, incredibly important, and knowing about what resources are available to you. So at the University of Michigan Flint, our counseling office, we refer to as CAPS, Counseling and Psychological Services, is completely free for all undergraduate and graduate students. And there are remote options available for connections. You do not have to be in the Flint community or the Genesee County area to connect in person with a licensed clinician. That is part of the package of you being a student here. It was something that at my respective institutions, both at the bachelor's and the master's level, I took advantage of as a student. It was incredibly helpful. So do not at all be afraid to ask for help.

Kayla Bueby [00:18:45]:
Many of the students absolutely asking for help. But if you're somebody who's considering it, please know that it is absolutely okay. It is very much supported and it can make a huge difference in your educational career to get support for your mental health and well-being throughout.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:06]:
Great tips, and I really appreciate you sharing those. Now you've also transitioned now to working on the faculty side, and you've moved from being in an administrative role to now being in a fully educational role, being working with students that are in both the BSW and MSW programs. Talk to me about this transition for you and now what you're hoping to be able to do to be able to work with additional graduate students because you have a new MSW program that's starting this fall and what you hope to bring to those students.

Kayla Bueby [00:19:40]:
Yeah. So, again, on my list of things I wanted to do was to teach one day. This is part of the reason I went into social work because there are so many different avenues for career exploration and different topics, different areas of work. So I'm so excited to have transitioned into this role and have such a passion for higher education. And this role, while it does involve instructional time, I'm predominantly administrative still and managing our practicum education program. So that strength really comes out in that regard and it's a great fit. I'm so excited about our MSW program coming. This is something that has been talked about for a long time.

Kayla Bueby [00:20:13]:
We have a lot of graduates of our program that are very excited about it and members of our Flint community. I'm so excited to try to give our students at the MSW level, and really at every every level, but certainly at the MSW level, the information that I wish I would have had at that time. An empathic listening ear, a professor that feels and I did have some of this, but to continue to give them things like a professor that feels like a real person, a professor that understands and has real world clinical experience in the social and understands when we get those really gray situations that come up or a huge ethical dilemma that might be something we need to consider. And what do you do in that situation? There's a lot of hard questions in social work, and students need to feel like they have somebody within their program as a faculty member that they can talk to about that and feel comfortable not knowing and be feeling okay, being vulnerable enough to ask questions about that. So as an educator, I'm really hoping that that can that's something that shines through. That also is something I hope that shines through in our practicum education program as we really start to prepare students in their internship experience for what real life social work really looks like. Bringing the textbook to life, really putting students in situations to say, this is what it can be like day to day. How do we handle that? How do we make sure we're operating in an ethical manner? And how do we have really difficult conversations about things that might come up? In social work, in particular, it's not just the ethical dilemmas, it's not just other concerns in that regard, but the professional use of self and social work is huge.

Kayla Bueby [00:21:53]:
And we all come to all of our professions with different biases, different perspectives, understandings of the world, and being able to self reflect is a huge piece of the social work process in becoming a professional. And if I can be part of that process for somebody and helping them self reflect without judgment or shame and helping them become a better professional in the future for the clients they'll serve, That ripple effect is something that I'm very much interested in being a part of, and I'm excited about preparing our students for just that.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:23]:
Now you've given a lot of piece of advice today, things that you've learned along the way. And I guess as you think back to your own graduate school journey, what are some other tips that you might want to give to others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner?

Kayla Bueby [00:22:38]:
With graduate education, you really have to start with the end in mind. And by that, I mean, get very serious and give some very honest thought to what you do with your career. And the reason I say that is because when you get into a graduate education space, oftentimes, the degree that you're looking for needs to align with that. I've heard stories, unfortunately, of students who have gone through multiple degree programs, including graduate degrees, and then realize, oh gosh. This did not prepare me in the way that I wanted to, or this isn't what I thought it was going to be. Do that research about what you want to do on a day to day basis long after you are out of school, And make sure that the programs that you are looking at will be able to support you in those endeavors. I would hate for anybody to be in a position where they didn't fully understand the career that they were looking to get into or didn't fully understand the requirements of achieving the career that they desperately wanted to be a part of. That is something that is so critical here.

Kayla Bueby [00:23:37]:
I know that that, especially in the social work world, was a very real conversation that many of the students in my cohort and my peers had because oftentimes folks felt like they just had to get an MSW because everybody else was doing that. And the reality is is that some careers in social work do not require an MSW, and you'll be spending a lot of time, money, and energy getting a degree that you don't necessarily need. Now that being said, there are a lot of careers in the social work field that do require an MSW. And so you wanna be aware of being the social work profession and others, what do you need to get you where you need to be? And how do you then find a school that they can get that can give that to you? Do not be afraid to email those professors, those program directors ahead of time and say, this is what I'm looking for. How can your program prepare me for this? And make sure that you get some very honest answers from them, so that you can make the decisions that you need to make, to make sure that you get the career and the education that you're looking for and hoping for that will hopefully prepare you for the rest of your professional life.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:39]:
Well, Kayla, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Good luck on the start of the new MSW at U of M Flint, and I truly wish you all the best.

Kayla Bueby [00:24:50]:
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:51]:
The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of masters and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].