Minor in Medicine and Healthcare

Minor in Medicine and Healthcare

Prepare to Pursue a Healthcare Career

Effective healthcare practitioners go beyond basic science. They also bring perspectives from the social sciences and humanities into their work. This minor prepares you for a career in medicine, dentistry or several other healthcare disciplines.

Why Minor in Medicine and Healthcare at Clarkson?

If you pursue a career in healthcare, you quickly learn that the technical parts of your job are just the start. This minor helps you build the knowledge and perspectives to get a 360-degree view of your chosen field.

That means taking advanced classes in biology, biomedical engineering and psychology, to name a few. But, you also get to work with anthropologists, historians, sociologists and political scientists to experience a fuller picture of healthcare in the United States.

By the time you graduate, you are prepared to take entrance exams used for admittance to graduate programs. (The MCAT may require a few additional courses, which you can discuss with your Pre-Healthcare Advisor). You also develop a perspective that takes some practitioners years to acquire — and one your future clients and patients will appreciate.

Curriculum

Complete 25 credit hours to receive credit for this minor: six required courses and healthcare-related electives focus on biomedical science and engineering, the social sciences and the humanities.

Courses cover topics including:

  • Anatomy and physiology
  • Bioinformatics
  • Healthcare policy
  • History of medicine
  • Human sexuality
  • Medical ethics
  • Neuroscience and society
  • Women, gender and science

Review the full curriculum below.

The medicine and healthcare minor gets you out of the classroom and into the field. To complete all requirements, you must spend at least 50 hours working in a professional setting involving interactions with both health professionals and clients or patients.

In the past, Clarkson students have worked in hospitals and clinics and served as EMTs, first responders or athletic trainers.

Get a no-holds-barred look at a range of healthcare professions from those who know the best: the people working in them. In the Medicine & Healthcare Profession Seminar, prepare to discuss potential career paths and roles with guest speakers. Learn how they got into their fields, the challenges and opportunities they see ahead and where you might fit in.

The medicine and healthcare minor fulfills most of your Clarkson Common Experience requirements. It does not fulfill all course requirements for students in certain advising tracks, though. (Pre-med students, for example, must take additional biology, chemistry and physics courses.)

The medicine and healthcare minor illuminates some of the choices you could face in the field. Our pre-health advising tracks ensure you're taking the right classes to reach your goals. Once you select a track, work closely with an advisor to build a plan leading to graduate work.

Some available advising tracks include:

  • Occupational Therapy (feeds into Clarkson's OT Program)
  • Physician Assistant Studies (feeds into Clarkson's PA Program)
  • Physical Therapy (feeds into Clarkson's PT Program)
  • Pre-dental
  • Pre-medical
  • Pre-pharmacy
  • Pre-public health
  • Pre-optometry
  • Pre-veterinarian

A minor in medicine and healthcare is available to students in all degree programs. To obtain a minor, students must complete 25 credit hours:

Required courses (13 credit hours):

  1. BY160 Cellular and Molecular Biology
  2. BY162 Cellular and Molecular Biology Lab (2 credits)
  3. BY471 Anatomy and Physiology I
  4. PY 151 Introduction to Psychology
  5. HS220 Medicine & Healthcare Profession Seminar (1 credit)
  6. HS405 Experiential Learning in Healthcare (1 credit)

HS220 Medicine & Healthcare Profession Seminar

This course is organized by the Career Center with the assistance of the Pre-Health Advising Coordinator and in consultation with the Clarkson Health Professions Committee Chair. It meets semi-weekly and uses a seminar format to bring in human health professionals from a diversity of fields to discuss their professions, including what their professions encompass, the academic and experiential tracks they followed to become medical professionals, their perspectives on the future directions of their fields and opportunities for Clarkson students to pursue these fields. It also brings representatives from different professional schools to discuss admission, expenses and career opportunities.

HS405 Experiential Learning in Medicine & Healthcare

To complete the minor, a student is required to accumulate at least 50 hours of work in a health professional setting. The work must include some form of interaction with health professionals and with patients or analogous health-service recipients. Examples include healthcare internships or volunteer positions at a hospital or clinic, completion of HS210 Health Coaches II or serving as an EMT, emergency first responder or athletic trainer. Conducting research with medical applications that do not involve working with patients/health-service recipients does not meet the requirements for this course.

In order to satisfy this requirement, the student must enroll in HS405 Experiential Learning in Medicine & Healthcare and, by the end of the relevant semester, have submitted evidence of the work experience hours completed, along with a short (around two pages) self-reflective essay. The essay should describe what the student did and learned during the experience and how the experience has affected the student’s professional goals and preparation. It is not necessary to enroll in HS405 prior to the work experience, and indeed it is often more practical for students to enroll in HS405 at some point after they have completed the necessary hours.

Medicine and Healthcare Electives

Electives (12 credit hours) include at least three credit hours from each of the four categories:

Category 1: Biomedical Science and Engineering

  • BR200 Intro to Biomedical & Rehabilitation Engineering
  • CM305 Biochemistry for Health Science or CM460 Biochemistry 1
  • BY 380 Techniques in Immunological Research
  • BY416 Principals of Toxicology & Epidemiology
  • BY419 Immunology
  • BY440 Introduction to Biomedical Rehabilitation Engineering & Science
  • BY448 Medical Microbiology
  • BY452 Pharmacology
  • BY472 Anatomy and Physiology II
  • BY473 Anatomy and Physiology I Lab (2 credits)
  • BY474 Anatomy and Physiology II Lab (2 credits)
  • BY476 Current Topics in Biology & Medicine
  • BY480 Advanced Cell Biology
  • BY485 Neural Engineering
  • BY488 Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine

Category 2: Health Psychology & Social Sciences

  • HS200 Health Coaches 1 [2 credits]
  • HS210 Health Coaches 2 [2 credits]
  • SS221 Introduction to Sexuality
  • ANTH 238 Men and Masculinities
  • PY268 Diversity Science
  • SOC320 Medical Sociology
  • SOC330 Health, Wealth, Inequality and the Environment
  • PY372 Community Psychology
  • PY461 Judgment and Decision Making or PY363 Judgment and Decision Making for the Biomedical Sciences
  • PY462 Abnormal Psychology
  • PY463 Health Psychology

Category 3: Medical Humanities

  • HIST 230 Science and Society
  • HIST 270 Introduction to Society, Culture & Biology
  • HIST 331 Ancient Medicine and Magic
  • HIST 321 History of Public Health in America
  • HIST 333 Science, Technology and Society in the Renaissance
  • HIST 335 History of Medicine in Europe and North America
  • HIST 338 Women, Gender and Science in American History
  • HIST 459 Neuroscience & Society

Category 4: Medical Ethics

  • BIE400 Responsible Conduct of Research
  • BIE410 Biomedical Ethics
  • PHIL241 Medical Ethics
  • POL380 The Law and Bioethics

I traveled to Vietnam my freshman year with Doctors Without Borders. This was an incredible experience, as it allowed me to see similarities and differences to our own healthcare system. As a future healthcare professional, having knowledge of other cultures’ healthcare systems will allow me to treat patients more holistically. I have learned about different cultures’ healthcare systems, how to triage, suture, new medical conditions during our condition of the week and current events in healthcare.

Brandon Formoza '22 BS in Biochemistry with a minor in medicine and healthcare

Career Possibilities

Few fields are growing as quickly as healthcare. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for workers is expected to increase 13 percent by 2031. That's nearly 2 million new jobs.

The medicine and healthcare minor can introduce you to fields including:

  • Dentistry
  • Medicine
  • Optometry
  • Pharmacy
  • Physical and occupational therapy
  • Physician assistant care
  • Public health
  • Veterinary medicine

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Contact the Department of Biology

Email: biology@clarkson.edu

Phone: 315-268-2342

The Department of Biology oversees the medicine and healthcare minor. Contact us today to learn more.

Take the Next Step

The minor in medicine and healthcare at Clarkson gives you a 360-degree view of the field — and makes you a better practitioner before you even start your career. Find out more today.