Human Service Studies Major
Back to Majors, Minors & Academic Programs
About the Major
Based on core values of social justice and equity, human service professionals work with individuals and communities addressing both personal and societal issues. The human service studies major teaches students how to meet human needs through evidence-based best practices and building relationships. Students build skill competency by taking courses that teach theory and foundational knowledge, interventions and skills and provide opportunities to apply that knowledge to practice in professional settings.
Jobs in Human Service Studies
- Social worker
- Juvenile court counselor
- Family Support Coordinator
- Probation officer
- Case Manager
Past Elon Human Service Studies Internships
- Burlington Housing Authority
- Residential Treatment Services of Burlington
- Twin Lakes Retirement Community
- Triad Health Project
- Alamance Partnership for Children
Related Majors
Human service studies mentors made an impact, changed the trajectory of student’s career
Less than a decade after graduating from Elon University, Pari Thibodeau is already working in her dream job — teaching, researching and doing clinical work on a medical school campus.
And she attributes her time at Elon and the mentorships and guidance she received in the Department of Human Service Studies for getting her to this moment.
Thibodeau entered Elon in 2011 as an Odyssey Scholar with an eye toward majoring in psychology. She knew she wanted to work in the mental health space and, not being familiar with social work, believed a psychology major was the best way to get there. But during her first year Winter Term, she took a course on fatherhood — a class she felt would make a good elective for her major — and became intrigued enough to take the introductory course for human service studies her second semester.
Elon really prepared me to be in the workforce. It not only prepared me with the content but prepared me professionally to be able to engage with my peers and colleagues and have critical conversations and be able to network with my professors.
“It totally pivoted my direction,” Thibodeau said. “I loved how hands-on human service studies was.”
As a student who wasn’t good with memorizing facts and had to work hard to get the good grades she earned, Thibodeau had been intimidated by college. That changed once she found her new major.
“What human services did well for me was really teach me that it’s not about the memorization, but it’s about the critical thinking,” she said. “It made coursework really easy for me and I felt more engaged and confident in my learning abilities.”
Of course, her classes did contain papers and tests and more typical coursework, but that’s not what Thibodeau remembers when she looks back. She remembers the many opportunities for hands-on learning experiences — including role-playing and group-based learning — and the one-on-one conversations with her professors that opened her eyes to the many possibilities that awaited her in social work.
“Elon really prepared me to be in the workforce,” she said. “It not only prepared me with the content but prepared me professionally to be able to engage with my peers and colleagues and have critical conversations and be able to network with my professors. That networking piece was a game changer for me. It wasn’t that they just taught me the coursework, but they taught me how to apply the coursework to real life and how to connect and draw from the communities I’m living in. That was really instrumental.”
The relationships she built with her Elon professors gave her the confidence to hold her own in graduate school interviews and job interviews. After graduating from Elon in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in human service studies, she earned her master’s in social work from Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD in social work from the University of Denver.
When she defended her PhD dissertation in the spring of 2023, three of her Elon professors and mentors attended.
“It just speaks volumes to me on how they really cared,” she said. “Their mentorship was like gold [at Elon]. The extra energy, time and commitment that I got from all my professors to know me as a person, not just a student in their class, is just invaluable. I’ve had a lot of schooling since then, and I think some of my best mentors were from Elon.”
Human service studies majors at Elon are required to get field experience through a practicum and an internship. Getting that real-world experience was priceless for Thibodeau because it gave her a chance to explore subsets of human services she was considering for a career.
During her sophomore year, she did her practicum during the January term at the North Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice in Alamance County. “I was still a sophomore, so I didn’t really know where I wanted to go, but I had this question mark of law school and doing law in social work,” she said. “And while that was very interesting, it kind of eliminated law for me.”
Then during the fall semester of her senior year, she interned at the Children’s Home Society in Greensboro. “And that was cool because I was also interested in adoption and foster care,” she said. “Similarly, it eliminated my interest in [working with] children and families.”
Thibodeau said she was fortunate to be able to eliminate career options while still an undergrad. “It’s helpful, right, because I’m not asking these questions in my first, second, third job,” she said.
Because she could whittle down her interests and narrow her scope while at Elon, she was able to immediately find her calling during the first year of her master’s program at Washington University in St. Louis. Interning in a hospital setting, she realized, “OK, third time’s the charm; this is what I want to do.”
Today, Thibodeau is an assistant professor at the START Center in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. (START stands for Stress, Trauma, Adversity, Research and Treatment.)
“Right now, I see patients two days a week, and I do research three days a week, and I teach, and I have social work trainees, and I mentor,” she said. “I kind of have the trifecta of research, teaching and clinical, which I’d been looking for.”
She is grateful to Elon and the human service studies department for letting her explore so many career options. And she encourages new students to take advantage of all the opportunities presented to them.
“Say yes to the opportunity for sure, say yes to the internship even if you’re unsure about it, say yes to reaching out to mentors,” she said.
“Being a human services major does not limit you in one profession or another,” she added. “It’s a dynamic profession and major that allows you to go in several different directions. I have friends who did social work after, some did communications, some marketing, some pivoted. …. The department itself is filled with opportunity that you may not get in other majors. The internship experience. The mentorships. … For me, I would, of course, 100 times over go back and pick human services knowing the people I would meet would change the trajectory of my career.”
Did You Know?
- Human service professionals work in mental health, family services, criminal justice, nonprofit management, health care and any area of need facing the community’s last, lost, littlest and least. As such, students choose specialized electives that focus on populations or areas of study such as Juvenile Justice, Play Therapy, Healthcare, Dating and Intimate Relationships, Families, Eating Disorders, Deaf Culture and ASL and Aging.
- Practice courses, community based-learning, practicum and internships are required and give students the chance to apply their skills and knowledge to real-world situations. Field education is linked to courses where students learn foundational and practical knowledge, process their practice experience with other students, and are closely supervised by a faculty member.
- Human service studies majors have many opportunities to conduct original research with a faculty mentor. They present their findings at academic forums on campus and at professional conferences. Elon students have presented on topics such as sexual responsibility, human trafficking, play therapy, child abuse prevention, foster care, food justice and community gardens.