Campus View of Hartwick College, Frisbee Field and Yager Hall

welcome to hartwick public health

Want to help prevent the next pandemic? Interested in developing far-reaching policies or overseeing the delivery of healthcare? Excited about teaching communities to protect themselves and others? Study Public Health at Hartwick College and you’ll develop the crucial skills and insights needed to succeed in this diverse and rapidly-growing field.

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Many Career Paths

Hartwick’s interdisciplinary approach to public health sets us apart. Working with professors from across the humanities, natural and social sciences, you’ll gain an understanding of the complex influences on public health. You’ll see how socio-political structures and cultural traditions can determine how one community manages an infectious disease while another continues to suffer from its effects.

Hartwick students during Occupational Safety & Environmental Health Internship

A set of core classes, including Global Health and Epidemiology, will help you build your foundation. As early as your first year, you can customize your major to your interests. Want to dive deep into science? Take classes in the microbiology of disease and reproductive health. Want to understand the breadth of contributing factors? Learn about healthcare policies, the business of healthcare systems, the psychology of addiction, or cultural influences on decision making.

Soon you’ll be ready to show off what you’ve learned with a Capstone project, which brings the opportunity to reflect on and present your findings at Student Showcase – even a professional conference. By the time you cross the Commencement stage and accept your degree, you’ll have an impressive digital resume that will propel you in graduate school – and into a career.

Extraordinary Opportunities

As a first-year student, you’ll take short courses in Hartwick’s 21st Century Modules that will help you develop a critical understanding of the cross-cultural fluency vital to working across diverse populations. Your personal Success Coach and Faculty Advisor will help you chart your specific Flightpath. By your junior year, your Career Coach and an Alumni Mentor working in your field of interest will share their knowledge and experience as you pursue post-graduation opportunities.

Take your education to the next level with Hartwick’s international experiences. Our renowned J Term program could take you and your new friends to study nutrition and sanitation in Thailand or the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Take the lead of Hartwick students before you by winning an Emerson International Internship Scholarship. Like them, you might contribute to public health in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Thailand, Zambia, Zimbabwe, or another destination.

Many of our public health graduates build their credentials in graduate school before fully launching their careers. Hartwick has agreements with several graduate programs in Public Health that give you special considerations in your pursuit of master’s degree programs. You can also apply to the New York State Public Health Corps (NYSPHC) Fellowship Program, where you will learn all aspects of what it’s like to work in public health.

An Education Built for You

Just as a career in public health is not one-size-fits-all, neither is Hartwick’s public health major. From the first day of classes, you’ll have the opportunity to customize your coursework toward what you’re most passionate about, whether that’s science, business, culture, or delivering healthcare to people in need at home or around the globe.

Where Will a Hartwick Degree Take You?

HEALTH EDUCATION

Like Eddie Cullenen ’23, now a public health educator at the Chenango County Department of Health. With a passion for health disparities, disease research, and implementation of health education in rural areas, he wrote his senior thesis on “Inequality in Sickness and In Health: The HIV/AIDS Epidemic and its Continued Legacy of Discrimination Against Gay Men.”

CHILDHOOD HEALTH

Like Alexandra Finocchiaro ’23, now a director at New Morning Schools in Bedford, New Hampshire, where she is part of a team that provides childcare in a healthy, safe, educational environment.

GRADUATE SCHOOL

Like Will Eger ’19, who just completed his master’s in public health at Yale University, with a focus on infectious disease epidemiology and social determinants of health. He’s now at Yale’s School of Medicine as a post-graduate research associate. At Hartwick, Will double majored in public health and Spanish, was named a John Christopher Hartwick Scholar, and was awarded an Emerson Scholarship to serve as a public health intern in the Amazon Region of Ecuador.

FACULTY

Michelle Budwitz

Assistant Professor of Public Health
607-431-4392

Lisle W. Dalton

Professor of Religious Studies and Department Chair, Coordinator of Public Health Program & Honors Program Co-Director
607-431-4936

Stephanie Carr

Assistant Professor of Biology
607-431-4410

Laurel Elder

Professor of Political Science and Department Chair
607-431-4887

Matthew Chick

Assistant Professor of Political Science & Pre-Law Program Coordinator
607-431-4611

Connie Anderson

Professor of Anthropology
607-431-4861

Carlena Cochi Ficano

Professor of Economics
607-431-4946

Cherilyn Lacy

Professor of History & Assistant Dean of Faculty
607-431-4882

James Buthman

Associate Professor of Political Science
607-431-4586

Elena Chernyak

Associate Professor of Sociology and Department Chair
607-431-4327

William Kowalczyk

Assistant Professor of Psychology
607-431-4965

Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree Program

Ready to move faster? Get the full Hartwick public health experience in three-quarters the time at three-quarters the cost. Learn more about the three-year program.

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