CSUCI Health Science Program Review: Self-Study

In the Spring of 2020, four faculty members (the writing team) started the process of preparing the program review self-study with some groundwork around the notion of competencies in general, and public health workforce competencies in particular. Embracing backward design as a process, the first task was to explore best practices and current trends in workforce development for public health, that could be used as a benchmark for our program (see list of resources). Students were also queried regarding competencies in healthcare. This enquiry resulted in a list of competencies that the program aims to have the graduates leave with. The document was circulated to program faculty for review; feedback received was incorporated into the document detailing the competencies as dynamic combinations of knowledge, skills and attitudes.Once the list of competencies was agreed upon, the writing team set out to identify the specific objectives that would operationalize those competencies; the second step was to distribute the objectives into three tiers of progression: an introductory level (I), a development level (D) and a mastery level (M). This process brought to light some gaps, redundancies and inconsistencies in our set of competencies, and thus another revision followed, resulting in a much tighter set of competencies and a detailed list of objectives that would act as Program Learning Objectives (PLOs) and connect the competencies to the Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). This new document was also circulated among program faculty and discussed at program meetings. Feedback was incorporated into the current draft which was labeled Health Science Educational Blueprint(in-progress).The third task involved initiating curriculum mapping and ensuring proper alignment between competencies, objectives and SLOs. Intentionally, this process has not been completed. To date, faculty in the program have identified which courses would fulfill each objective (and thus contribute to the acquisition of each competency). However, the first review of the SLOs currently included in each course brought to light many gaps. The writing team felt that it was preferable to wait to receive overall program feedback from this review process, and use it to inform this third phase of curriculum review.