Health professions community offers support, experience
By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor 217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu
A new living and learning community on the Urbana campus is bringing together students interested in health-related careers and offering them programming, support services and valuable experiential learning in their chosen fields of study.
The new Health Professions Living-Learning Community, launched this semester, offers students who are interested in careers in medicine, nursing, physical or occupational therapy, veterinary medicine and related fields unique opportunities to explore their interests through specialized health sciences programming.
The health professions community is one of seven living-learning communities in the Housing Division on the Urbana campus. The communities offer students academic programs; tutoring, advising and mentoring services; and experiential learning and social activities that support their interests.
The community is designed to be inclusive of all health professions, not just students in pre-medicine. The community occupies two floors of Oglesby Hall, and 110 students are living in the community during its inaugural semester. About three-quarters of the residents selected the community when submitting their housing contracts; the remaining students were placed there based on their declared majors, said Marc Goldman, assistant director for academic programs in Housing.
“When we were preparing the community, we saw that as many as 3,000 undergraduates on campus are pursuing some sort of degree that would fit in the allied health field. So, there’s a huge student base to draw from,” Goldman said.
“Students have that professional mindset and are looking for any advantage they can get. And they see a community like this – that’s preparing them from Day One for a professional career or school, that helps them make connections with people who can assist them with applying to medical school – and see it as an advantage.”
The community provides students with a sense of place, connection and focus with peers who share their interests; educates students about the breadth of opportunities available in the health professions, and strives to build awareness about societal issues relative to health care, Goldman said.
With the inception of the health professions community, a new course section specifically for the community’s students was added to the Molecular and Cellular Biology 199 course schedule this fall. The new section offers a broad survey of the various health professions.
“Students may come into college with a goal of being a doctor but they may not truly understand what that means academically,” said Kari Schueller, program coordinator for the health professions community and for the Women in Math, Science and Engineering living-learning community. “After their first semester of biology and chemistry classes, they may re-assess and decide that being a doctor isn’t for them. But maybe there’s another profession in the allied health field – nursing or physical therapy – that is.”
Because students who choose to go into health professions need to get started on the right academic path early on, two resident advisers hold advising sessions in the health professions community three hours each week.
“These students are under a lot more academic pressure than some of their peers,” Schueller said. “They need to make career decisions earlier. We really strive to help them make those decisions by offering programs and special services without putting a lot of pressure on them.”
The community’s resident advisers are holding a series of discussion sessions featuring experts who explore various topics in which the students have indicated they are interested. During a recent session, a practitioner from McKinley Health Center facilitated a discussion on sex and the health professions.
Since the community is new, many of the programs are still under development. Among those under development is a guest-in-residence program that will bring in professionals to share their experiences and insights through workshops and informal discussions on topics of interest to the health professions students, and a program that will allow groups of students interested in specific fields to observe, work in or engage in volunteer activities in those areas.
Summer orientation for the students – many of whom are freshmen – was geared toward team-building and communication exercises to foster a sense of community among the residents, Schueller said. “We wanted them to get to know one another – that was our first and foremost goal. We didn’t bring in panel discussions or serious academic types of things because we know it’s very stressful for freshmen, leaving home for the first time.”
During October and again at the end of the academic year, staff will gather feedback from the students and from other stakeholders about the services, programs and activities being offered to help guide programmatic decisions.
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