WORKPLACE HEALTH BACHELOR PROGRAM FILLS A VITAL NEED
Humber College’s graduates well-placed to enter the workforce with confidence
It’s not unusual for Erin MandelShorser, Humber College’s bachelor of health sciences – workplace health and wellness program coordinator, to receive phone calls from organizations asking when students will be available for employment. That’s because as Canada’s only bachelor program of its kind, the offering is filling a vital need.
“We get calls on a weekly basis, which makes it clear that in today’s work landscape employees’ wellness is becoming a priority,” says MandelShorser. “The healthier employees are, the smarter and harder they work, so you retain better talent and have a company that’s more productive and efficient.”
That’s where graduates of workplace health and wellness, which launched in 2017, will come in. When the program’s first cohort enters the workforce, it will do so with competencies to deliver proactive, effective workplace health and wellness programs within organizational settings.
Among that cohort is Bianca Garcia. She says one of the offering’s biggest benefits is its multidisciplinary approach, which draws from the fields of leadership; mental, physical, and psychological health; business and communication; and knowledge translation. As students explore the various areas, they do so from the most current developments in evidenceinformed, interprofessional practice within a business-oriented framework.
“Because we have professors from different areas, it gives us the necessary knowledge we need to go into the real world since we’ll be working as part of a team,” says Garcia. “In Year 1, for example, we had a project that crossed over into three of our classes, so we pulled knowledge from all three. There’s also a lot of group work, business cases and we get to do a 14week work placement too.”
To further promote its interdisciplinary and interprofessional practice approach, workplace health and wellness now offers a transfer pathway for students who previously finished a diploma in a related field. Eligible students will receive a block transfer credit, says Mandel-Shorser.