{"id":8431,"date":"2011-10-07T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T10:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=8431"},"modified":"2011-10-06T22:32:13","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T03:32:13","slug":"new-minor-at-apsu-to-help-pre-professional-health-students-prepare-for-graduate-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2011\/10\/07\/new-minor-at-apsu-to-help-pre-professional-health-students-prepare-for-graduate-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"New minor at APSU to help pre-professional health students prepare for graduate programs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – When a student comes to Austin Peay State University wanting to be a doctor, he or she can pretty much major in any field. Typically, students enroll in biology, chemistry or psychology programs, but a few have been known to get degrees in subjects such as English or history.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they have to fulfill a number of prerequisites in order to go to med school,\u201d Dr. Cindy Taylor, professor of biology, said.<\/p>\n

Those prerequisites include several courses in science-related fields, such as biology and chemistry, and many professional health graduate programs mandate that students complete a certain number of volunteer hours and job-shadowing experiences before they apply for admission. <\/p>\n

The sooner they figure all this out, the more likely they are to find the right track and succeed in their goal of becoming a medical professional. That\u2019s why Taylor is encouraging incoming freshmen who are interested in applying to a graduate-level health program after graduating from Austin Peay to consider the new pre-professional health minor, now offered through the APSU College of Science and Mathematics, when mapping out their next four years of college.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they come in as a freshman, we want them to start thinking about what they need to do every semester to prepare for their goal of getting into a professional school,\u201d Taylor, the minor\u2019s coordinator, said. \u201cIt\u2019s another way of getting students on track early.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students can declare the new minor anytime in their academic career at APSU, via OneStop. They can also use OneStop at that same time to declare their specific pre-professional health program area.<\/p>\n

The new pre-professional health minor was created earlier this year with the goal of providing guidance to students looking to specialize in the pre-professional areas such as pre-medicine, pre-pharmacy, pre-physical therapy, pre-occupational therapy, pre-physician\u2019s assistant and pre-veterinary. By discussing the minor with their academic adviser, students may also discover more information about other medical profession options they might not have previously considered.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many students come in and say I\u2019m pre-med, but there are so many other options that might fit more of the lifestyle they want or the time they want to dedicate to a professional health school,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThere are a lot of different health career options they\u2019re just not aware of. Instead of just giving up and saying, \u2018I can\u2019t do anything,\u2019 we want to assist them in finding their best fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The APSU Department of Allied Health Sciences also offers a course, AHS 1010: Introduction to Healthcare Professions, that is structured to assist students in understanding career options within the health care field.<\/p>\n

And if a student takes the unlikely path of majoring in a field outside the sciences, such as history, the prerequisites they\u2019ll have to take to get into a professional graduate program will count toward their minor.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the students going into the pre-professional programs will have taken these courses as prerequisites, so why not have them earn a minor for doing all that extra coursework,\u201d Dr. Karen Meisch, associate professor of biology, said.
\nStudents associated with Veterans Affairs that have an interest in professional health programs are encouraged to also look into declaring this minor.<\/p>\n

A new student organization, the Pre-Health Professional Society, was also formed earlier this year to help provide a support network for these students. At club meetings, members will mingle with like-minded students and learn what they need to do to prepare for graduate programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of these students have no clue you really have to start your freshmen year to prepare,\u201d Meisch, the club\u2019s adviser, said. \u201cWe try to get them as early as possible to make sure they\u2019re aware of what they need to be doing, rather than waiting for when they need to be applying, and they say, \u2018oh my gosh, I need 120 volunteer hours.\u2019 Some of the students will wait until application time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The organization will provide workshops for members on everything from preparing for graduate entrance exams to writing personal statements when applying to professional health schools.<\/p>\n

Information on the new minor, including a planning guide instructing students on what courses to take, is available online at www.apsu.edu\/cosm\/preprofessional-health-minor<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – When a student comes to Austin Peay State University wanting to be a doctor, he or she can pretty much major in any field. Typically, students enroll in biology, chemistry or psychology programs, but a few have been known to get degrees in subjects such as English or history. \u201cBut they have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,3448,6811,262,10644,11017,11019,825,3763,2273,11021,11020,11018,11022],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-2bZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8431"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8433,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8431\/revisions\/8433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}