This orientation is for our Community Site and Task supervisors, MPH students, and Faculty Course Coordinators.

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I’m Dr. Spence. I’ve been with the Health Science Center since 2012 and became Associate Dean in 2017. Over the past few years, we’ve restructured our MPH curriculum to ensure that we adhere to the 2016 accreditation guidelines of the Council for the Education of Public Health, or CEPH. This restructuring involved developing an extended practice experience that aligns with students’ final year of their MPH coursework and offers them the opportunity to become immersed in public health practice and provide a valuable service in return to the community.

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In order to promote a win-win situation for our students and community partners, we believe that it truly takes a village to implement high quality MPH practice experiences that result in skilled graduates entering the workforce. All of you are crucial parts of this team.

Site supervisors and task supervisors are located at community organizations or other entities providing public health services to communities. The Site Supervisor serves as the primary individual overseeing students’ day-to-day work during their internships. Site Supervisors are required to have a graduate degree in any field and two years of post-graduate experience. Task supervisors work in partnership with Site Supervisors and are available for additional guidance and support to students.

Faculty Course Coordinators oversee the academic side of internships for the School of Public Health and serve as instructors of record for the year-long Practice Experience course.

Faculty Course Coordinators, Site Supervisors and Task supervisors all provide vital mentoring, professional development and performance evaluation of students.

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Students enroll sections of Practice Experience to complete their MPH programs. Typically we group students together in sections of approximately 8-16 students and we promote co-learning among these groups.

Finally, we have a committee that meets monthly and discusses issues that arise, ways to improve practice experience, and consistency between the different sections of the course.

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What unites our team is a joint commitment to improve the health and wellbeing of our communities. Whether it’s the long-term influence of mentorship or the footprints left behind by students, we know our Practice Experience team members leave a lasting impression in another’s lives.

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Our Master’s Degree in Public Health is designed to promote graduates who successfully collaborate in interprofessional settings to address the social determinants that influence the health of communities. Our graduates approach their work from a multi-level systems perspective and navigate the complex challenges associated with developing solutions for a healthier community.

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Traditional didactic methods of classroom teaching fail to result in long-term retention of usability of knowledge. Our curriculum is competency-based and the Practice Experience course is designed to synthesize and sustain knowledge through observation, application and reflection. By placing students in practice for an extended period, students can more easily generate the mental models needed to integrate new information. This in turn promotes critical thinking and skill development.

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Every student’s learning experience is unique; however, there are some features of practice experience that we expect to be consistent for graduates of our program. These are as follows:• Students must enroll and complete three consecutive semesters• Students must log a total of 600 hours, with a possible waiver of up to 300 for

evidence of post-baccalaureate professional experiences that align with our MPH foundational competencies

• Each student must have a minimum of one Faculty Course Coordinator, one Site Supervisor and one Task Supervisor

• Each student must produce a final product that makes a meaningful contribution to the community

• Each student must complete an Integrative Learning Experience assignment which synthesizes multiple MPH competencies. This is an accreditation requirement and in our program takes the form of a Policy Analysis and Policy Brief.

• Other course assignments include reflection papers, co-learning activities and presentations that have been carefully selected to strengthen MPH competencies and promote knowledge retention and use.

• Students must meet with their site supervisor or task supervisor for a total of 60 minutes at least twice per month. These sessions are documented in supervision

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logs and submitted to Faculty Course Coordinators.

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We routinely collect feedback from all of our Practice Experience stakeholders and make efforts to continuously improve our program. Based on this feedback, we’ve made some changes this year, including mandating the addition of a task supervisor who has signature authority on the supervision logs. We believe this will promote continuity and productivity for students. We have also redesigned some of our reflection prompts and will allow students to choose the sequence of these prompts within each semester. Finally, we are offering more flexibility in how students distribute their hours. We’ve recognized in particular that our Veterans, International Students and Dual degree students may need more variability in how their hours are distributed from week to week. Students, with approval from their Site Supervisors and Faculty Course Coordinators, may at times pause their hours to complete clinical rotations, and may shorten or extend their one-year commitments by approximately 6-10 weeks, provided that they complete their overall hour commitment and have an academic justification for this variability. In other words, we still expect students to treat their internships like they would professional employment roles, but we recognize that some students’ enrollment classifications require more flexibility.

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The COVID 19 pandemic has triggered a few additional modifications that we are making temporarily. These include waivers of up to 300 hours for students who are volunteering for local health departments to assist with COVID 19 investigations. These hours must be verified by the local health department personnel. We are also allowing additional opportunities for remote work in recognition that most employment settings have dramatically changed to accommodate shelter-in-place orders. Finally, we are allowing students to delay the start dates. Students may submit signed agreement forms to confirm their placements as late as June 1st, 2020 and may delay logging hours until July 1st. However, students beginning their Practice Experience in the summer of 2020 still must be able to develop a draft work and project plan no later than July 24th.

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We ask that students and site supervisors arrange one or more conversations prior to starting to log hours.

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To start with, we need to have several pieces of information about students’ internships. Students must obtain agreement forms that are signed by both a site supervisor and that person’s supervisor or other authorizing official for the organization. We must also receive a contact form that includes phone numbers, mailing and email addresses for the site supervisor and at least one task supervisor. Finally, we need to have a copy of a resume or CV for the site supervisor. Should any of this information change during the internship, students are responsible for submitting updated information to our email address (PHPE@unthsc.edu) as well as to their Faculty Course Coordinator.

Students must be enrolled in a section of PHED 5297 no later than June 1st, 2020.

Students should identify the onboarding procedures of their internship sites and initiate those as soon as possible.

Students and site supervisors should hold a conversation about expectations for this internship. This should include a discussion of the anticipated schedule, preferred communication channels, expectations of professionalism, description of the current organizational culture and and preferred work styles.

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Finally, before students may begin logging hours, all students and site supervisors must complete the Qualtrics survey (provided at the end of this presentation) to indicate that these steps and orientation are complete.

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What does it mean to be professional? Consider first what comes to your mind when you think about professional appearance. Or professional behavior. What comes to mind when you think about unprofessional in appearance or behavior?

It’s important to recognize that we may all have somewhat different ideas about what we label as professional or unprofessional.

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The School of Public Health is committed to establishing an educational environment that is equitable, diverse and inclusive. To this end, we ask all members of our Practice Experience team to be mindful of how our attitudes, beliefs and expectations are influenced by factors such as race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, faith affiliation, gender identity, physical abilities and other characteristics.

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MPH students complete their internships in a wide arrange of settings, from large health care entities to small non-profit organizations. Before beginning the internship, please discuss the norms and expectations for these settings.

We also encourage everyone to maintain ongoing discussions about safety and wellbeing in the workplace. Students, it will be important for you to raise concerns about your safety and comfort with your supervisory team.

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What is organizational culture? We spend so much time with our work colleagues, we often develop unspoken expectations for how we interact. Site supervisors, please take some time to reflect on the norms of your organization and describe these to your student interns. Do meetings start on time? How are disagreements handled? How are changes communicated?

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Once the Practice Experience begins, there are a variety of documents and forms that are used to promote clear expectations and consistency.

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We will review 7 key components as part of this orientation process.

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Following confirmation of student internships, a Practice Experience guide will be provided to students, site supervisors, and Faculty Course coordinators. The guide includes much of the information reviewed in this orientation, as well as helpful lists of roles and tasks for each team member.

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The MPH curriculum is centered around 22 foundational competencies, as well as five concentration-specific competencies for each concentration. Our MPH concentrations for students starting their internships in 2020 include Epidemiology, Maternal and Child Health, Public Health Practice, and finally Professional Options, which is our online degree program. The tasks that students perform in their internships must address at least three foundational and two concentration specific competencies. Faculty Course Coordinators and Site Supervisors can work collaboratively with students to identify the competencies and tasks most appropriate in each setting.

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Each section of Practice Experience will have its own syllabus and Canvas site. While Faculty Course Coordinators all start with shared syllabus and Canvas templates, they may make minor modifications to the schedule and course layout. Students should closely follow the guidelines provided in their syllabi and Canvas sites.

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Students must have supervisory meetings with Site or Task supervisors at least once every other week for 60 minutes. Students will prepare for these meetings by completing a draft version of the supervision and time log, which includes narrative information on page 1 and the time log and signature on page two.

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During the first several weeks of the internship, students will develop an initial work plan and project plan. While a complete draft of this document must be finished before the end of the Summer 2020 term, students may continue to revise as needed over the course of the three semesters. However, before starting the second semester, Faculty Course Coordinators must approve the draft before more hours may be logged.

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Generally, any concerns, large or small, should be documented in the bi-monthly supervision logs. Corrective actions forms should be used when there are ongoing concerns with student performance, and these should be implemented prior to suspending the student internship sites. Students must successfully complete all three semesters, and may have to start their internships over from the beginning if their internship is suspended at any time due to performance concerns.

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At the end of each semester, the Faculty Course Coordinators will send a student performance evaluation form to the Site Supervisor. The Site Supervisor will complete the document and email it back to the Faculty Course Coordinators, who will then complete their section and load document into Canvas for the student.

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There are a few other dimensions of Practice Experience that we will cover before wrapping up this orientation session.

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Each semester, the Faculty Course Coordinator will want to hold a meeting with the Site Supervisor and the student. For the first meeting, this should involve an opportunity for the Faculty Course Coordinator to see where the student is working, learn more about the organization, and meet key personnel. If the location is in the DFW metroplex and we are not in the midst of pandemic shelter-in-place orders, we prefer for these visits to take place in person. If the location is outside of the DFW metroplex, or we are in pandemic conditions, this visit may occur virtually via Zoom or other videoconferencing technology. Additional visits will be scheduled for the second and third terms.

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The Practice Experience course semesters are graded as Pass/Fail with 70% of points required to receive a passing grade. However, several other conditions need to be met in order to receive a passing grade, these include students submitting the following items:(1) All of the required supervision and time logs. If no time was logged during the

corresponding period, students must still submit a log with zero hours recorded and an update on their status.

(2) All of the required reflection papers each semester(3) The Integrative Learning Experience capstone assignment, which is a policy

analysis and brief due at the end of the second term(4) Self assessment of the three foundational and two concentration-specific

competencies the student chose to work on for their work and project plan

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Our School of Public Health practice experience team members for the 2020-2021 academic year include myself as Associate Dean, six Faculty Course Coordinators, and additional supports from our Academic Services and Administrative personnel.

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Our Faculty Course Coordinators for the coming year include Dr’s Kayla Fair, Diana Cervantes, Shlesma Chhetri, Erica Spears, Corron Sanders and Charlotte Noble. Dr. Misty Smethers oversees support from Academic Services, and Ms. Elizabeth Heyerdahl provides administrative support, including managing our PHPE@unthsc.edu email address.

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Thank you so much for being a part of our MPH Practice Experience internships!

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To finish the orientation process, please use the link or QR code on this page to answer a few questions and indicate that the orientation is complete.

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