The College of Public Health is offering a master’s of public health for full-time working graduate students Kent State’s main campus, the Twinsburg regional campus and will soon be beginning at the Trumball regional campus this fall.

“Nurses, pharmacists, non profit organizations health departments; we have people from all over for the MPH program because it enriches the program and sort of elevates the discussion in the classroom due to having people that have been doing this for years and years,” said Willie Oglesby, assistant professor of health policy and management for the masters program.

“It makes for the experiences to be very engaging and very interactive, having students that already have some background in it Public Health is great,” Oglesby said.

The master’s degree includes five specialty areas, epidemiology, biostatistics, environmental health sciences, social and behavioral Sciences and health policy and management. The five specializations are actually five separate master’s programs.

Olgesby teaches two courses at both the Twinsburg and main campus. He is one of ten other Kent State professors who teach classes for the master’s program at all campuses.

Kenneth Zakariasen, director of the MPH, created the public health master’s as a cohort program, in which students take the same classes together at the same time as they move through the curriculum.

“We make it a cohort program so they do it together and can support each other,” Oglesby said. “We try to keep that cohort small enough so that we can stimulate a lot of professional networking and a sort of connectedness among the students.”

Zakariasen said the College Public Health prides itself on the program because the professors believe it is training the leaders of the future.

“If people are wanting to advance in their careers in public health and are working full-time, then I think that the masters program is a great degree program, and I think students in the program would say the same thing,” Oglesby said.

The College of Public Health will start informational sessions on the MPH program beginning in April.

Contact Halie Rogers at [email protected].