Field Directors

Hello colleagues,

I'm curious to know about common practices related to affiliation agreements.  Do you require a formal/legal affiliation agreement with all agencies for all placements?  If so, do you use a universal template on the University side or do you have the agency produce an agreement, or perhaps a combination of the two?  Would anyone out there be willing to share your standard affiliation agreement?  Lastly, what is the term (as far as time period) of your agreement?

Thanks in advance!

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CJ Sorenson
Director of Field Education
Utah State University
Logan UT
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Hello CJ,
Yes, we require a formal affiliation agreement for all agencies, no exceptions. Our program falls under the School of Health Sciences within the university. The affiliation agreement is standard for all programs in the school. Sites are able to request and negotiate revisions to the agreement but those must be reviewed and approved by our legal team. All of the affiliation agreements are signed by the President of the university. Our affiliation agreements are valid for an initial term of 1 year and automatically renew up to a total of 3 years unless either party decides to end the agreement early.

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Megan Grode Wolters
Director of MSW Field Education
University of South Dakota
Sioux Falls SD
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Hi CJ, 

We also are requiring formal affiliations to be completed for all sites. We do have a template that our legal team created.  Some agencies, especially large corporation's, will often want to use there agreements.  We allow this but it has to be approved by our legal team.  

Our agreements are auto renewing, which for us means once they are signed they are good until one of the parties terminated the agreement. This has saved us countless hours. 

Hope this helps! 


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Sarah Brown
Director of Field and Professional Education
Monmouth University School of Social Work
Long Branch NJ
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