On May 19, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health’s (SPH) commencement celebration included its first-ever cohort of undergraduate students. Students graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Public Health, a program SPH launched in 2022 in order to help bolster the nation’s public health workforce.
Newly minted SPH grad Laura Landini, who will be working as an environmental health technician for the City of Minneapolis this summer, says that her classes gave her a real feel for what it will be like to join the public health workforce. As part of her Public Health Capstone class (PUBH 4289), for example, Landini and a group of students conducted a community health assessment of Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota to examine health data and statistics to identify the community’s most pressing public health needs. “It felt like we were doing something that an actual public health organization would do, the kind of work that happens in the real world,” Landini said, adding that the class project allowed her to envision “actually having a full-time public health career and being out in the community.”
Landini’s experience captures what leaders of SPH’s undergraduate program envisioned when they created the BA in Public Health major. At a time when the U.S.’s public health workforce is shrinking—at least 80,000 new employees are needed to meet our nation’s most basic public health needs—the program is helping to meet the critical need for a skilled, diverse public health workforce. By offering a rigorous curriculum that provides students with a solid foundation in public health principles—focusing on disease prevention, health promotion in local communities, and the identification and elimination of health inequalities—SPH’s undergraduate program is preparing students for immediate entry into the public health workforce.
SPH Professor and Undergraduate Program Director Ruby Nguyen said she was impressed with the inaugural class’s enthusiasm. “Our inaugural class of BA students stand out for their passion for public health and their eagerness to start working in the field,” she said. In addition to their coursework, Nguyen said, SPH identified internship opportunities suitable for the undergraduates as a way to supplement their education and increase their professional skills. “Our BA graduates will be able to contribute to the public health workforce on day one.”
The urge to make a difference in the public health field inspired Jake Phillips, another member of SPH’s first undergraduate class. Phillips was majoring in computer science and doing frontline healthcare work as a University EMT when he learned about SPH’s public health major. “I had worked on the medical side of things, and what I saw was that a lot of what determines health outcomes happens long before people end up in the clinic,” he said. “I wanted to find a way to make a broader difference, so I was excited to receive the email from SPH announcing this new major.”
Phillips said he loved the breadth of the material covered by the undergraduate curriculum. “A key part of this program is that we get to explore so many things,” he says, noting that his research interests range from LGBTQ health to how transportation affects health access in rural communities. One of the curriculum highlights, he said, was Information and Data Sources for Public Health Decision Making (PUBH 3214), in which students designed their own public health surveillance systems. “I created a system to track birth outcomes in sexual and gender minorities,” said Phillips. “That was so cool, because I felt like it was an opportunity to combine all of the previous principles we’d learned and create an actual surveillance system that didn’t exist yet!” After graduation, Phillips will travel to Ireland to research a community paramedic program, a perfect combination of his public-health degree and his experience as an EMT.
As they made their way through the course requirements, SPH’s inaugural undergraduate class was also asked to weigh in on the program and provide candid feedback about their experiences. “We were the first ones going through it, and our joke was that we were the guinea pigs,” Landini said. But both Phillips and Landini said they appreciated how open faculty were to input. “Everyone was really good about asking us for feedback, so I felt we had a real voice in our education because we were the first ones going through it,” Phillips said.
It was also a real bonding experience to be the inaugural class, said Landini. “We’ve all gotten a lot closer this year,” she said, adding that they hang out between classes and go on outings to both bowling alleys and nonprofit fundraisers.
As they prepare to enter the workforce, it’s clear that SPH’s new generation of changemakers are clearly ready to take on the most urgent health challenges of our time. And while they’re the first BA class, this year’s graduates will soon be joined by future graduates in a rapidly expanding undergraduate program.
“Our class sizes have doubled year-over-year as we begin our third cohort this fall,” Nguyen said. And in addition to increasing numbers of BA students, Nguyen noted that the University’s undergraduate public health minor program will transfer from the College of Liberal Arts to SPH in the fall, meaning that hundreds of public health minor students will also be attending SPH. “We are definitely in an expansion phase!”
