Post Master’s Certificate: Veterinary Social Work

Online Post-Master’s Certificate Program

Veterinary Social Work is a growing practice area that addresses the intersection of human needs and animal welfare. This cutting-edge, online certificate program is specifically designed for mental health or related helping professionals seeking to integrate clinical skills with a passion for the human-animal bond. With instruction from faculty who are clinical experts and experienced trainers in animal-assisted therapy, you will explore key areas that balance evidenced-based clinical interventions with the curative powers of sentient beings.

The program is comprehensive, providing both clinically driven theoretical knowledge and the hands-on application of skills and interventions with animals as co-therapists. You will learn to create transformative experiences for people and animals throughout their lives, with an emphasis on the intrinsic link between human and animal welfare.

Completion of the program will enrich your career prospects and enhance your ability to deliver effective targeted interventions in a context that both heals client issues and elevates the curative powers of the human-animal bond. Such work within a wide variety of communities and settings promotes healing and support where it is most needed while extending access to this emerging humanistic mental health modality.

• Interdisciplinary Approach: Engages a broad spectrum of social work theory and social justice parallels with animal behavior science, focusing on the links between human and animal welfare.
• Specialized Curriculum: Covers essential topics such as animal-assisted therapy and welfare; the human-animal bond; bereavement and grief counseling related to animal loss, the dynamics between human and animal violence, and crisis intervention for people with pets.
• Clinical Focus: This program is unique from all other veterinary social work courses and programs in its emphasis and inclusion of advanced clinical theories, interventions and skills.
• Compassion Fatigue Management: Equips students with strategies to handle personal and professional stress, enhancing their longevity and effectiveness in the field while offering those same benefits to those who love and care for animals.
• Online Learning: Offers a fully live online format that allows students to balance their studies with personal and professional commitments from anywhere in the world.
• Expert Faculty: Features world experts in the human-animal bond and veterinary social work. The instructors are seasoned veterinary social work professionals who provide valuable insights and mentorship in veterinary social work practices.
• The receipt of this program completion certificate will become a standard for educational attainment in this field and help candidates prepare for other associated designations in this field.

This certificate requires the completion of 18 two-hour online sessions over two semesters. Assignments include weekly readings, several small projects, and a final learning assessment.

Pre-requisites:

• Master’s degree in social work or an allied helping profession, such as psychological counseling, nursing, pastoral counseling, or education.
• Affirmation of a code of professional ethics associated with social work or an allied helping profession.

The program will meet for two-hour sessions over the fall and spring semesters, 18 sessions total. Program dates for fall 2025 are forthcoming, please check back. 

Katherine Compitus, DSW, LCSW-R, C-AAIS

Dr. Katherine Compitus is a Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work, Chair of the Practice Curriculum Area and Director of the School’s Veterinary Social Work post-masters program. She is a Colombian-American doctor of clinical social work, licensed bilingual clinical social worker, and biopsychologist. Her research focuses on trauma studies, specifically within the human-animal bond, with a focus on the disproportionate systemic oppression of people of color. This includes an examination of multiple aspects of society, including social policy, mental health services, crisis intervention, and the social determinants of health. Dr. Compitus is the author of the Zooeyia blog on PsychologyToday.com where she discusses crisis intervention in the human-animal bond and she is the author of The Human-Animal Bond and Clinical Social Work Practice (Springer, 2021) and Animal House: A Clinician’s Guide to Animal Hoarding (U.Oxford Press, In Press).

Susan Dowd Stone, MSW, LCSW

Susan Dowd Stone, MSW, LCSW is an Adjunct Professor in the Silver School of Social Work where she has taught courses and presented workshops and webinars on a variety of evidence-based modalities and topics for 16 years including CBT, DBT, IPT, and psychodynamic approaches, veterinary social work and women's reproductive mental health for the MSW program, the Post Master's Certificate Program at the Office of Global and Lifelong Learning. Throughout her career, Professor Stone has combined clinical expertise and social justice beliefs in her roles as an educator, therapist, author, and advocate. She has served as a Public Reviewer for the National Institute of Mental Health intermittently since 2010.

Over the past three decades, Ms. Stone has devoted much of her career to advancing the critical familial and therapeutic roles of animals in mental health, initiating three successful psychiatric AAI programs in Bergen County Hospitals with her canine partner Dickens with whom she was honored with an NYU President's Service Award. For 14 years she facilitated an animal bereavement support group embedded in a large veterinary practice. She was a former team trainer and evaluator for the Pet Partners Program (formerly Delta Society) and has presented workshops, webinars, and staff debriefings at veterinary conferences and within vet practices.

At NYU Silver, she created and presented the inaugural course, Animal Companion Bereavement in Clinical Social Work and will present Veterinary Social Work (spring 2025). She is the co-developer of the two-semester Post-Masters Certificate course in Veterinary Social Work; the presenter of the CE webinar Opportunities in Veterinary Social Work for the Office of Global Center and Lifelong Learning, and faculty advisor to NYU's Animal Assisted Therapy Club. Ms. Stone's latest publication is Mourning Companion Animals: Guiding Clients from Loss to Legacy (Routledge ‘24). She is the founder of www.petlosshelp.net which serves as a crucial source of comfort for those mourning the loss of their companion animals. She maintains a private practice in Closter, NJ, and may be reached through her email susanstonelcsw@aol.com or her website www.susandowdstone.com

36 NYSED and ASWB/ACE Continuing Education Contact Hours will be awarded for this program.

55 jurisdictions accept ACE-approved provider CE contact hours. ACE is not an approved Continuing Education provider in the states of New York (though NYU Silver is NYSED CE approved in NYS) and West Virginia, unless the event is outside of West VA. ACE only approves individual courses in New Jersey, though NYU Silver is CSWE-accredited and therefore accepted for licensed NJ professionals. Here is a full list of statutes related to social work CE.

Access the Post-Master's Certificate application here.

The cost of this certificate program is $2,130, which includes registration and application fees and the cost of an online compendium of readings.

Available discounts include:

• 25% discount for NYU Silver School of Social Work MSW/DSW/PhD alumni
• 25% discount for practicum instructors currently working with NYU Silver School of Social Work graduate students
• 15% discount for applicants who have already completed one NYU Silver certificate program
• 50% discount for Veterans

Please note: discounts may not be combined.

Deposit: Upon acceptance into the program, a $250 non-refundable deposit is required to secure your place. This deposit is applied to the total cost of tuition.

Refund Policy for Early Withdrawal
The $250.00 program deposit is non-refundable. Students who withdraw before the first class will be refunded 100% of their fees (minus the deposit). Students who withdraw after up to and including two (2) sessions will be refunded 70% of their fees (minus the deposit). Students who withdraw after up to and including four (4) sessions will be refunded 55% of their fees (minus the deposit). Students who withdraw after four (4) sessions will receive no refund.