Health Sciences International Education Expands This Fall
UArizona Health Sciences International is expanding access to education to support the next generation of health care professionals – wherever they have an internet connection.
With nearly half of Health Sciences graduate and professional students preferring learning online to learning in person the expansion of virtual options makes educational opportunities available to a larger group of students.
Responding to a significant preference among Health Sciences students for online education, University of Arizona Health Sciences International is expanding course offerings available through the five Health Sciences colleges.
A recent Health Sciences International survey found that 47% of Health Sciences graduate and professional students prefer learning online to learning in person, including the convenience and ability of scheduling classes around personal and professional responsibilities.
Carol Gregorio, PhD, interim director of UArizona Health Sciences International, says she is passionate about making health sciences education more accessible through the move to online.
“Introducing courses in an online format is one way to make education accessible to students where in-person attendance is not an option,” said Dr. Gregorio, who also serves as assistant vice provost for Global Health Sciences. “As we have learned over the past year, quality learning can absolutely happen in an online setting.”
With the support of Health Sciences International, the five Health Sciences colleges are offering more than 100 new credit hours of online coursework for the 2021-2022 academic year, each expanding their existing online catalogs. The new courses cover a variety of innovative and timely topics, including ethics in aging, virology, global nursing, maternal and child health, and pharmaceutics.
“It has been amazing to have the opportunity to fund so many exciting new courses in collaboration with interdisciplinary leaders from the respective colleges,” Dr. Gregorio said. “Without their partnership, hard work and expertise, Health Sciences wouldn’t have these one-of-a-kind new offerings.”
All new courses funded through Health Sciences International are fully online iCourses for students enrolled at UArizona. In several cases, they are also available to UArizona students around the world through Arizona Online and Arizona International. Many of the offerings are one-unit, five-week or seven-and-a-half-week courses to allow students the ability to stack their course load depending on their interests and capacity at any given time of the year.
Students will benefit from a robust offering of more than 100 credit hours of new online health sciences courses this academic year.
Laying the Groundwork
Health Sciences International not only is positioning high quality health sciences education within reach for more students today, it also is paving the way for the introduction of new certificate and degree programs in the future. All new online courses are designated for use in global and online academic programs anticipated to launch in the next two years and beyond.
These short- and long-term efforts are part of the push to close global health care education and health care delivery gaps.
“We are going to make a global impact,” Dr. Gregorio emphasized. “Transitioning all these courses to online is setting up the colleges to be able to more quickly launch global dual-degree programs at international partner universities in the years to come, bringing UArizona Health Sciences to emerging economies around the world.