VERMILLION, S.D. – Nearly 450 students are enrolled in the newly organized Department of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of South Dakota. The department combines several existing programs into one, unified department that launched this fall. It is one of nine departments in the university’s School of Health Sciences.
The new department brings together three levels of education, including an undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree in health sciences, a Master’s program in public health (MPH) and a Ph.D. program in health science.
“We are now able to offer our students the opportunity to continue and seamlessly transition their educations from undergraduate to graduate programs in the same field,” said Haifa Samra, Ph.D., dean of the School of Health Sciences.
Samra also said the department delivers exciting new opportunities for interprofessional and interdisciplinary collaboration, an important aspect of cutting-edge health care. These opportunities, Samra explained, exist not only for students within all levels of the new department, but also for students in other programs within the School of Health Sciences.
The department is already proving to be popular at USD as a degree destination. Of the 447 students in the department, 354 are enrolled in the undergraduate portion of the department, 60 are enrolled in the master’s program, and 33 are part of the Ph.D. program.