The Program
The Five College Program in Culture, Health, and Science (CHS) is a certificate program that allows undergraduate liberal arts students to explore human health, disease, and healing from interdisciplinary perspectives. Graduate schools recognize that tomorrow's health experts will need interdisciplinary training to link their understandings of history, culture, and behavior with clinical, biological, and epidemiologic models of health and disease. Students design a plan of study that approaches "health" holistically from the perspective of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
Completing a CHS certificate builds on the liberal arts approach to equip students with tools to think critically about health issues. For example, students may learn to:
- Recognize historical patterns of disease distribution, treatment, and health disparities
- Appreciate the value of integrating literature, philosophy, and the arts with studies in STEM fields (and vice versa)
- Develop technical skills (such as research design, media literacy, gene editing, foreign languages, econometrics, doula training, or statistical analysis) to apply to health issues
- Navigate healthcare systems and be an advocate for themselves and others
- Apply contributions of multiple disciplines to the realm of public health, health promotion, cultural competence, disease eradication and global health
Students learn how behavior influences disease distribution, how biomedical categories change across time and culture, and how political and socioeconomic factors affect disease and treatment. CHS students learn to interpret and communicate their results to diverse audiences.
Requirements
Coursework
The seven required courses are to be distributed across the following five categories of inquiry:
Category 1: Biocultural Approaches
Interdisciplinary and/or comparative approaches that explore the interdependent influences on human health and disease
Category 2: Mechanisms of Disease Transmission
Mechanisms of disease growth and transmission within individuals and populations
Category 3: Population Health and Disease
Exploring the relationships among social, behavioral, economic and other aggregate population forces on human health and disease
Category 4: Ethics, Policy and Practice
Covering structures of knowledge about health and healthcare decision making, including ethical and philosophical issues and their corresponding policy platforms, as well as the implementation of healthcare in practice
Category 5: Research Design and Analysis
Concepts of evidence, data collection, research ethics, measurement and modes of analysis
Further Details
- No course can be used to satisfy more than one category.
- At least four of the courses must be above introductory level.
- No more than three courses can “double count” toward a student’s major.
Independent Research Project
The Certificate requires the completion of an independent project such as an internship, thesis, Division III project, course project, independent study or other activity. You work with your campus CHS advisor to develop a project that satisfies both the Certificate requirements and your own interests. Not sure if you have an independent project that qualifies? Meet with your CHS Campus Advisor to find out.
Foreign Language
Although not required, training in a foreign language may be necessary for students seeking internships or summer research positions.