The Council on Academic Affairs unanimously approved a new elective health and human sciences course on Thursday afternoon.

CAA approved the new course HHS-3000, Interprofessional Education in Collaborative Health and Human Services, which will first be available in the spring 2023 semester and then be available on demand.

Interprofessional Education in Collaborative Health and Human Services is an elective course only for students within the College of Health and Human Services.

The course aims to teach students about the roles and responsibilities of other professions and how to collaborate and communicate effectively as teams for shared client-centered or public health needs assessments and interventions.

Mikki Sherwood, the chair of the department of human services, explained to CAA the reasoning behind creating a new elective course to bring the programs within the college together.

“What we found was [the College of Health and Human Services] have a wide array of departments and programs,” Sherwood said. “And we wanted to tie all of us together because we do engage the course in interprofessional education. And we’re all meshed in one another’s program areas, so that was the purpose.”

Sherwood told CAA the initial plan for the first semester of the course.

“Right now for the first go around, we’re going to work with CCAR [Industries] because we have relationships within that we are keeping that open,” Sherwood said. “And it’s just a way to bring all of our programs together, work with CCAR and develop life plans of action that are cooperative, but also then each of our program areas will also give input on their own.”

The course is a three-credit lecture type course taught in either a face-to-face format or hybrid.

The course is graded standardly and can not be repeated.

CAA unanimously approved the course Interprofessional Education in Collaborative Health and Human Services with one revision to the proposal.

Madelyn Kidd can be reached at 581-2812 or at mekidd@eiu.edu.