Sistema de Bombeo y Almacenamiento de LGN

of knowledge through a culminating experience.

2.5.a. Identification of the culminating experience required for each professional public health degree program. If this is common across the program’s professional degree

programs, it need be described only once. If it varies by degree or specialty area, sufficient information must be provided to assess compliance by each.

For students in the MPH program, including those in the joint programs, the culminating experience is the MPH Capstone. The MPH Capstone project provides students with an

opportunity to apply principles and skills learned in the classroom and in the field – through the measurement, organization, and improvement of public health and health care. Capstone projects require one of the following options for all students:

a. research grant proposal,

b. public health program intervention proposal, c. public health policy systematic review, d. program evaluation,

e. cost-effectiveness analysis, f. quality improvement project, g. research report, or

h. a project designed by the student which meets similar criteria as the above for a Public Health Capstone Project.

The Capstone project includes a written component with an abstract/summary, a full paper, and an oral presentation. The capstone product is of sufficient quality to meet standards required for submission of a peer-reviewed manuscript, a presentation at a professional meeting, and/or a grant proposal ready for submission.

Capstone project work begins with a kick-off meeting shortly after the start of the Summer term followed by topic generation, writing of one-page topic papers, and informal small group meetings throughout the rest of the Summer term. In the Fall term, students enroll in the first of three sequential Capstone courses (ECS 177-179) where they continue their project development throughout the next three quarters. The Capstone series offers 1) weekly brief didactic sessions on discrete skills necessary for students to move their Capstone projects forward, and 2) weekly small group sessions, linked by format (intervention, research, quality improvement, policy, evaluation), where students and Capstone faculty advisors meet, discuss, and provide feedback to one another on the projects.

2.5.b. Assessment of the extent to which this criterion is met and an analysis of the program’s strengths, weaknesses, and plans relating to this criterion.

This criterion is met.

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 The Capstone projects are of high academic quality, and some projects move forward for implementation or publication after graduation. Each represents a thorough integration of skills and concepts developed throughout the curriculum.

The focus is on the student to engage with the project and develop their Capstone in conjunction with a supportive team of knowledgeable faculty and peers. This in turn develops further skills in project team development and professional development opportunities for providing feedback to their peers.

On a weekly basis for each of the three terms, students build their projects in a step-wise fashion specific to needs of their project’s format and revise and enhance their projects as the academic year progresses. Students must engage in both written communication and weekly verbal descriptions of their projects’ goals. In the third term, the projects

culminate in a professional oral presentation to faculty, peers, and the community.

Weaknesses:

 For full-time students, some believe there is limited time to fully explore all potential interests prior to selecting and developing their topics for the projects. Certainly, some potential projects are limited by time constraints due to the nature of that particular framework. For example, for those interested in completing a research manuscript, it is challenging to adequately design, receive IRB approval, implement data collection, conduct analysis, and write a manuscript of publishable quality which upholds our academic standards. As such, we often direct our quantitatively-focused students to utilize secondary data which allows them to bypass the time-consuming step of data collection. Additionally, many students in the research manuscript framework have been successful with completing qualitative research.

 Other feedback we have received from students indicates the need for a smaller faculty advisor/student ratio so that the weekly small group meetings are more effective, with more time devoted to each student for faculty and peer feedback.

Plans for Improvement:

We are continually seeking ways to improve the experience. Over the past three years, minor adjustments have been made each year to consolidate the options for course selection and format options to improve the guidance we are able to give students and streamline their progress. For 2015-16, we increased the number of Capstone faculty advisors in order to allow smaller group sizes for students in the Capstone course and more effectively facilitate feedback and interaction on the projects. This has reduced the student/advisor ratio to 4 students (from 6 students) per advisor.

Plans for the proposed online MPH:

As mentioned in the previous section, the culminating experience will be connected directly to the practical experience in a newly designed “Practicum” for the online MPH. We are taking the structure of the residential MPH program’s Capstone and combining it with the structure and policies of the residential MPH Internship to create a Practicum within the online MPH. Students

91 will develop their project, which will be embedded in their home institution (as their field

experience but outside their regular job responsibilities), and they will be required to demonstrate their learning during the program with several presentations, a poster, and a final written

assignment. They will also prepare a ‘business case’ to show how their proposed plan or improvement will benefit the department, organization, or institution.

The development of the written part of the practicum will be carefully connected to material in the MPH coursework, so that students think about their proposed problem from a number of different perspectives.

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2.6 Required Competencies. For each degree program and area of specialization within