Aspiring students of global health will have a new minor to help them gain a more focused and dynamic understanding of health problems that transcend national boundaries. Next year, the new Cornell University Global Health Program will offer a Global Health minor to any interested and capable students.
This new program involves faculty from Weill Cornell Medical College, and the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Human Ecology, Agriculture and Life Sciences, Engineering, and Veterinary Medicine, and seeks to “create a sustainable and innovative university-wide Global Health research and training program at Cornell University that engages undergraduate, graduate, and medical students and faculty from multiple disciplines to solve problems of global health,” according to Dr. Rebecca Stoltzfus, program director for the Ithaca Campus.
The program is being established in collaboration with the Weill Cornell Medical College, where Dr. Warren Johnson is the program director. The new minor will be available to both undergraduate and graduate students interested in integrating their knowledge of human and veterinary medicine, nutrition, engineering, agriculture, or any other discipline with a strong desire to address global health issues. The new program will not only provide a means of learning about global health on campus, but will also provide students with very applied and interactive programs through internships and research opportunities abroad.
Cornell University provides numerous opportunities to broaden one’s knowledge of global health issues through various organizations and classes. In fact, there are so many opportunities that students often feel overwhelmed and may not know how or where to start cultivating their own interests in global health.
The Global Health minor seeks “to integrate and publicize the substantial strengths that already exist in global health at Cornell, including outreach, teaching, and research,” says Dr. Stoltzfus. The minor would be one of the first steps in helping students early in their careers to form solid links between their various interests and global health. The beauty of the Global Health minor is in its multidisciplinary capacity to blend the many fields of study offered at Cornell University with global health problems. The minor will allow students with virtually any major within the four colleges, to pursue a study of health problems across the world with the aim of addressing multidisciplinary solutions.
It will consist of a 200-level gateway course, a problem-focused course that will address global health issues through a variety of different perspectives, and additional elective courses that would be a total of approximately 15 credits. The approved elective courses will be a selection of both existing and new courses designed for the minor. Over time, a seminar level course will be added to the curriculum. The new curriculum will take advantage of the infectious disease expertise of faculty at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and set up video-conferencing sessions with professors at the medical school. Lectures will be designed to give students an integrated approach to global health, with clinical lectures from the medical school and social and natural science lectures from the Ithaca campus.
In addition, the minor will include the possibility global health research and internships abroad. Students will be encouraged to participate in rotations in well established Cornell faculty research sites in Bangladesh, Ghana, Tanzania, Peru, and Brazil. Students interested in more bench-lab research, however, can take advantage of the minor’s connections with the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and Weill Medical College of Cornell University to participate in internships and research in fields such as tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, or parasitic diseases.
The Global Health minor is still being designed and structured. Prior to seeking approval on a college by college basis, program coordinators are developing student and faculty advisory boards to seek opinions about the structure of the minor. The advisory boards are currently looking at several models of minors at Cornell University and other universities to make a strategic decision about the flexibility and structure of the minor. Once a consensus is reached, coordinators will work with the administrations of several colleges to approve the minor.
Students are encouraged to communicate their ideas and suggestions about the Global Health minor to the program coordinators. If they have any comments or suggestions for the curriculum, they should contact Dr. Rebecca Stoltzfus, director of the Global Health program, or Ms. Jeanne Moseley, the Global Health program coordinator.