The College of Health Sciences Student Services and Academic Advising has restructured in order to increase efficiency and offer more academic and career services, resources and programming to students. The office, which serves the programs of respiratory care, radiological sciences, kinesiology, social work, community and environmental health, nursing, and advises for the pre-professional health pathways are now managed by three pre-teams: pre-nursing, pre-clinical, and pre-health.
The pre-nursing team advises and assists students who want to apply to the Bachelor of Science in Nursing pre-licensure program. The team has two professional advisors and two peer advisors. In addition to continued one-on-one meetings with students for academic advising, the team is offering various workshops associated with student development and School of Nursing updates and information. This January the team offered their second virtual application workshop to help students through the admissions process to the School of Nursing.
The first application workshop was held in August 2020. At that term, the team also offered a Parallel Plan information session for students who are interested in alternative paths to a nursing career, other health care careers and majors that share similar prerequisites to nursing. In addition, Jacob Allen, one of the pre-nursing peer advisors and current nursing student, interviewed Matt Niece, director of Counseling Services, to learn how students could better navigate the stressors related to COVID and learning remotely.
The pre-clinical team includes one professional advisor and two peer advisors. They focus on the college’s smaller undergraduate clinical programs – radiologic sciences, respiratory care, and social work with the purpose to provide more exposure to the programs as well as educate listeners to the ins and outs of these lesser known health fields. The team’s professional advisor, Olga Salinas, launched a podcast series where she interviews faculty, students and alumni in the college: focusing on their experiences in their programs and careers.
The pre-health team focuses on the majors of Health Studies and Public Health as well as students who declare a pre-professional pathway, indicating their intention to pursue their education at a professional health school. For example, students who want to continue on to medical school can declare a pre-medical pathway, but must also declare a major in order to graduate. The College of Health Sciences offers advising towards 13 pre-professional health pathways. This team has a coordinator, a professional advisor and two peer advisors. The pre-health team also focuses on offering regular opportunities for student networking and mentoring as well as workshops to help students through the admissions process to professional schools.
“Restructuring our office has allowed us to streamline our processes, which gives us more opportunity to increase targeted educational programming for our students,” said Mary Crowell, director of the College of Health Sciences Student Services and Academic Advising office. “We are excited to develop and strengthen our College of Health Sciences community and provide multiple ways for students to engage.”
To learn more about the enhanced programming available to students, visit the advising teams webpage.