Public health program closer

After 10 months of work, Student Government Board member Lia Petrose now has a potential starting date for a public health certificate for undergraduate students.

At SGB’s weekly public meeting Tuesday, Petrose said introductory courses for the certificate will be “tentatively available for the fall 2017 semester.”

Petrose said she and her committee have confirmed one course, Introduction to Public Health, for the certificate with the deans of the Graduate School of Public Health and the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Both deans — N. John Cooper of the Dietrich School and Donald Burke of GSPH — approved the course. If all goes smoothly, students can begin taking the courses during the 2017 spring semester.

Petrose has worked to create a public health certificate for undergraduate students since she was elected to SGB in January. Since March, she and her task force have met with the deans of GSPH and the Dietrich School to discuss introducing the certificate.

“It will probably have an honors supplement section to it. We are also going to collaborate with the statistics program to do a public health-focused supplement to the Intro to Statistics course,” Petrose said.

According to Petrose, she and her committee are working to confirm the next two courses — an honors-level intro course and a statistics course — with the two schools. Already, three GSPH professors have expressed interest in teaching the introductory course.

Petrose refused to specify which professors, as they hadn’t signed a contract to teach the course.

“Once the rest of the courses are confirmed, students can put the certificate on their transcript,” she said. “Once you get higher up in the certificate you take courses in the Graduate School of Public Health.”

“We have to have a long-term plan for teacher compensation,” Petrose said. “We’re in the midst of creating a financial model to fund the certificate.”

“The next step is figuring out the financial model and figuring out the model between two different schools,” Petrose said.

In other action:

On Nov. 6, SGB’s Governmental Relations Committee will host Panthers and Politics, a town hall meeting with Mike Doyle, the representative for Pennsylvania’s 14th district. After the meeting, the committee will host a reception.

SGB voted in Pitt Program Council as a member of its assembly, a lower governing board that began meeting last semester. Board members Everett Green and Natalie Dall are involved in the assembly, which previously consisted of Student Affairs and Campus Women’s Organization. The assembly meets the first and third Monday of each month in the union, but had its meeting last night because of the fall break.

Green, Board member and executive vice president , said that the groups each have one representative.

“It’s a place where the Board goes over highlights from SGB committee chairs and groups can report events,” Green said. “They offer up more detailed cabinet reports.”

Green said the assembly is a way to make SGB more accessible to student groups.

“It offers the opportunity to bring up ideas and changes,” Green said.

Allocations:

The National Student Speech Language Hearing Association requested $1,600 to travel to a conference. The Board approved its request in full.

The Student EMS club requested $4,978.20 to travel to a conference. The Board approved $4,423.95 and denied $554.25.

The Asian Intervarsity Christian Fellowship requested $1,983 to travel to a conference. The Board approved its request in full.

Lady Panthers Club Soccer requested $4,939 to travel to nationals. The Board approved its request in full.