Wharton, Nursing to offer new joint degree

Set to begin in the fall, the Health Care Mangement joint degree will fuse business and nursing skills. A new joint degree program in Health Care Management will begin this fall designed to combine the biological, pharmacological and nutritional knowledge of a Nursing education with the business skills of a Wharton education. After a year of planning, the Nursing and Wharton schools will offer a joint degree program this fall -- allowing students to learn about the fields of nursing and health care management. Students in the program may have to take summer classes, in addition to a fifth year of school, in order to complete the degree. The joint degree programs follows on the heels of the University's Agenda for Excellence initiatives, according to Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduate Nursing Studies Mary Naylor. "When we thought about the University's Agenda for Excellence, we thought it made sense to build an agenda together," Naylor said. "The Agenda for Excellence gave us the momentum to do things for the future about ways we could capitalize on the strengths of each school and offer students exciting cross-curriculum experiences." Students in the new program will take Nursing's science and clinical components, as well as the basic business components of Wharton. They will also be required to take two courses designed specifically for the joint degree -- a writing intensive course combining the "Introduction to Nursing" course with Wharton's "Health Care Management 101" course in their freshman year. Additionally they must take a course combining a health care management case study with nursing research. Students apply to the program through the Nursing school and specify whether they would like to be in Nursing or Wharton if they are not accepted for the joint degree. The program is "exceedingly competitive," according to Nursing Assistant Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs Marian Martez. The office only plans to admit approximately eight people to the joint program and have received between 20 and 30 applicants. Two students have already been accepted through early admission applications. "This program is wonderful because it combines caring with management," Martez said. "The students will mold health care systems to be managed for the the good of people and society." Joseph Sun, director of undergraduate affairs at Wharton, said the new program "formalizes what has already been a possibility," since students have previously had the opportunity to complete a dual degree between Nursing and Wharton. Few students took advantage of this opportunity, however, due to the degree's heavy course load. Nursing and Wharton junior Rachel Kutcher, for example, has had to take five or six classes per semester, in addition to two years of summer school, to fulfill the degree's requirements. She said the new joint degree "is a great idea and it will open up doors for many more students." Sun noted that only one or two students each year complete the dual degree between Nursing and Wharton. She stressed that the new "structured" joint degree will make it easier for students to complete a degree in both fields. With the implementation of the Nursing and Health Care Management joint degree, Wharton now has joint degree programs with all of the undergraduate schools, including an International Studies joint degree with the College and a Management and Technology degree with Engineering. "The joint degrees help us to tap in- to what are the best and strongest parts of the University," Sun said. Nursing has also proposed to "tap into" the other undergraduate schools. Administrators are in the early stages of planning a joint degree with Engineering -- scheduled to begin in the fall of 1999 -- with a focus on medical and home-care technology. For the fall of 2000, they are also discussing an International Studies joint degree program with the College which would give Nursing students the opportunity to learn about various cultures.