Students at Brigham Young University were thrown for a loop this week when it was announced the bachelor's degree in social work has been discontinued.

Students and faculty in the social work programs received word of the program's impending cancellation on Oct. 31, said Cole Hooley, a senior in the social work program and president of the BSW Student Association.

Hooley said the effective date for the discontinuation was Nov. 1, and students were not given enough advance notice.

"Nov. 1 was the deadline for all prospective BSW students to turn in their applications," Hooley said.

Students who are currently in the program will be allowed to graduate with a social work degree, said university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins. The decision was made in part because a license in social work requires a master's degree, she said.

Jenkins said changes will be made to improve the master's in social work program, which will still be available at BYU. The decision was not made without a good deal of study, and no employees will be terminated she said.

"The college came to this decision after very careful study of the issues involved here," Jenkins said.

Students who have been doing volunteer work, gathering letters of recommendation and taking social work courses for their applications to the program are now being turned away, Hooley said.

Brit Taufer, a junior from Las Vegas, said she was planning on applying to the major for fall 2008. The move is disappointing because she has done a great deal of volunteer work to prepare for the program and has geared her classes toward applying.

Taufer said she is retaking a class to boost her grade point average, and the decision to cancel the program has made that class useless. The decision was made with little notice to students and faculty, Taufer said, and students can no longer drop classes for the semester.

"The timing was bad because in their letters, the administration let us know that they've been working on this for years," she said.

She has done volunteer work around the valley and in Ecuador, and said most students who get into the social work program have done hundreds of hours of service.

Although other majors in the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences can help a student qualify for a master's program in social work, Taufer said she is not interested in a different major. Students who have a bachelor's degree in social work only need one year in the master's program, while other students need two, she said.

"This is definitely the major I want to stick with, so I'll probably end up changing schools," Taufer said.

Taufer said she will probably decide to return to Las Vegas and get her degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

One of the biggest problems Hooley sees is for students who have moved to Utah to enter the social work program at BYU. These students have been counting on a low tuition price and may be stuck with out-of-state tuition if they need to change schools, he said.

Although current students will not be directly impacted, many have grouped together to try and protest the decision.

Sheri Rowley, a second year master's student in social work at BYU, said she is involved with efforts to protest the decision because of her training in the field.

"Part of the goal of being a social worker is to make things better and to fight things you think are not right," she said.

Rowley said she feels terminating the program is a disservice to incoming students as well as the community. The community benefits from the program through graduates as well as students fulfilling a necessary internship.

"We have probably around 60 students doing service around the city each year," she said.

Rowley and Hooley, along with other students, have been organizing ways to communicate their disapproval to the administration. Rowley said a question and answer session is scheduled for Nov. 8 with David Magleby, dean of the College of Family, Home and Social Sciences.

The student group, dubbed Voices for the BYU Social Work Program, has submitted an application for an on-campus demonstration directly before the meeting. They are also asking community members to write letters concerning the value of social work students.

Jenkins said she has not seen the students' application for the demonstration yet, but it has a good chance at success. The application is necessary to work out aspects such as timing, location and purpose, she said.

"They just need to go through the process," Jenkins said. "We have had several (demonstrations) on campus. I do know that those applications that have recently gone through the dean of students have been approved."

The question and answer session will be at 11 a.m. Nov. 8 in Room 250 of the Spencer W. Kimball Tower. Pending approval, organizers are planning to stage a demonstration in front of the Joseph F. Smith building at 10 a.m. that day.