Public health educational opportunities in a five institution public health consortium

Public health education is a rapidly growing area for undergraduate and graduate education, but despite considerable interest there are a limited number of course offerings in this discipline at many colleges and universities. In the Philadelphia region, four liberal arts colleges and one tertiary hospital have joined together to establish a public health consortium to offer opportunities and learning experiences in public health. All five institutions share common elements in their missions: to promote multidisciplinary perspectives of the world among students, to create a diverse student body, and to prepare future generations of leaders. The purpose of the Consortium is to educate undergraduate and graduate students to understand and address complex public health problems locally and globally. The Consortium includes course exchange, the sharing of faculty expertise, and community-based learning experiences to foster student public health opportunities and relies on each school's course offerings, faculty, and community relationships to offer educational opportunities by experts with diverse, multidisciplinary perspectives. The sharing of resources is valuable in light of current economic challenges and offers colleges opportunities to expand their course offerings and experiences which is attractive to student applicants. Faculty also benefit from collaborating with colleagues who have mutual interests which in turn can stimulate innovative scholarly endeavors across institutions. This presentation will address perspectives from each institution. Early development of the consortium, challenges in inter-collegiate exchanges, administration perspectives, course offerings using technology, service learning, student seminars, development of outcome measures, and piloting of educational programs will be discussed.