Health Sciences

This course focuses on the basics of nutrition and exercise for health and wellbeing, teaching the fundamentals of designing exercise and physical activity programs and using nutrition to enhance exercise and sports performance. It develops an understanding of how exercise and nutrition relate to health outcomes, including the role of diet in chronic disease and obesity. 

This course introduces epidemiological principles and methods, including basic tools for measuring illness and risk factors in the population, interpreting and assessing the quality of scientific health evidence by critiquing a range of study designs, and reporting on epidemiological research.

Study the development of cognition through a neuroscientific lens, examine how the nervous system starts out wired for every possible contingency to eventually prune (tune) itself towards an efficient functioning for the environment it resides it, study the neural network structure and functioning of the brain, its common properties that support efficient cognitive functioning, and how disruptions to these networks can impair cognition. The course also covers the theory of neuroplasticity, focusing on the role of the brain’s lifelong ability to rewire itself. In addition, study mirror neurons, atypical developmental processes (including autism, schizophrenia, and trauma), and the intersection between developmental cognitive neuroscience and society. A mandatory field trip to Amsterdam is included, where the Van Gogh museum is visited to study Van Gogh’s art as a clinical case and experience immediate neuroplasticity first-hand by dining in complete darkness during a three-course meal. Motivated and dedicated students have the opportunity to co-author a paper with the course coordinator for potential publication in well-respected journals (topics of interest can be discussed). Students should have completed at least two Psychology courses and should be interested in brain development and neuroscientific methods that can be used to uncover developmental processes.

The course is designed to equip students with experience, knowledge, and skills for succeeding in globally interdependent and culturally diverse workplaces. Throughout the course, students will be challenged to question, reflect upon, and respond thoughtfully to the issues they observe and encounter in the internship setting and local host environment. Students will have the opportunity to cultivate professional and personal development skills as defined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Assignments focus on building a portfolio that highlights those competencies and their application to workplace skills. Students complete 45 hours of in-person and asynchronous online learning activities and 225-300 hours at the internship placement.

The course addresses the critical role of physical activity in preventing lifestyle-related diseases and improving quality of life. Students learn to assess, design, and implement safe and effective physical activity programs tailored to diverse populations. The course covers health assessment, exercise prescription, ergonomics, and fitness testing, promoting lifelong healthy habits and physical well-being.

This course provides students with an understanding of the wider social and environmental determinants of health and how the determinants impact health attitudes, behaviors, and health outcomes. This also addresses strategies and interventions at the individual, community, national, and global levels.

This course provides students an understanding of physical and mental health conditions. It explores the relationships between physiology, physical health, lifestyle factors, and mental health and wellbeing. 

This course examines the multidisciplinary nature of the study of food and nutrition. The course covers a basic understanding of food production, processing and storage from the farmer's field to the dinner table. Topics include food safety, food selection behavior as well as balanced nutrition as part of life style instrumental to good health. Basic macro- and micronutrients from these food and its absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion allow students to understand the function of these nutrients in the human body. The course also includes food composition and functional properties of major nutrients, food additives, food hygiene, safety and regulation, food security, healthy eating-concepts and practice, essential nutrients, diet and disease relationship.

This intermediate level course explores new health paradigms so future health professionals make decisions that transcend health systems and the societies they interact with. The course covers the following topics:

• Health and its history and types of medicine
• Biopsychosocial Model
• New tendencies in health designs
• Future of health designs

Health communication is becoming increasingly important in a world faced with new health challenges from obesity to Ebola, anxiety to diabetes. This course considers the role of language in our experience of and beliefs about health and illness. Students learn how health communication differs among various communities, both monolingual and multilingual, from the grassroots level, such as in families, to broader groups, for example, between health professionals and patients. It also considers the effects of social diversity, such as the age, gender, and ethnicity of patients and healthcare professionals. Students become proficient in analyzing a range of relevant uses of language, including narratives about health and illness, the representation of health and illness in the media, computer-mediated communication about illness, and public health information, persuasion and campaigns.