Master Plan: How campus investment will boost AHS master’s programs

Three master’s programs in the College of Applied Health Sciences are undergoing transformations for the digital age.

After receiving a $2.035 million award from the University of Illinois Investment for Growth program, AHS faculty, administrators and industry partners will collaborate to create online versions of the Master of Public Health and Master of Health Administration degrees. Additionally, the Master of Recreation, Sport and Tourism online degree will be restructured into three specialized programs: recreation and park management, sport management and administration, and tourism and event management.

The revamped online degrees are expected to expand the accessibility of AHS programs worldwide, reaching new students from underrepresented and nontraditional backgrounds.

“Going global has been a priority of this university for years,” said Pedro Hallal, Alvin M. and Ruth L. Sandall professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health and director of the MPH program. “So now going global is a priority of this program as well.”

The addition of “stackable certificates” across each discipline will attract nontraditional students looking to boost their knowledge as well as mid-career professionals seeking expertise in their chosen industry.

Each program is committed to including new voices in their online instructional material, mainly experienced professionals working in the respective fields.

“It’ll be a nice blend,” said Lynne Barnes, the longtime top Carle Foundation Hospital administrator who was hired as director of the MHA program this fall. “We’ll have professors who really understand the knowledge base of the field, and we’ll also have clinical people who are working in the field doing the teaching, just like we do for the in-person program.”

The creation of new online master’s degree formats will start with collaboration with AHS’ online learning team. The online MPH program and restructured RST online master’s degrees will begin enrolling students in fall 2025; the online MHA program will debut in fall 2026.

“We’re taking the ‘growth’ term very seriously,” said Professor Bill Stewart, interim department head for RST. “This is a long-term investment for us, not just a one-off thing.”

MPH: ‘The perfect storm’ for growth 

To populations around the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic was a clarion call to the vital importance of public health infrastructure.

The awakening clearly reached young people pondering their life paths: According to data from the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, applications to public health graduate degree programs increased 40 percent from 2020 to 2021.

“It’s so much easier now to choose a career related to public health,” said KCH Associate Professor Andi Schwingel, who is working alongside Hallal in developing the online coursework.

For the University of Illinois’ MPH program, the decision to create an online program is also a matter of maturity, Hallal said. Four years have elapsed since the program obtained accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health.

“Some people in your neighborhood will add a security camera, and you don’t think it’s important until your house gets robbed, and then you see, ‘Oh, I needed that camera,’” Hallal said. “I think that is exactly what happened with public health.

“It was the perfect storm for our time to grow.”

The work ahead will be rigorous, with 20-plus courses awaiting development. Faculty plan to work with external partners, such as public health professionals, to create new course content. And it will be suited to the future landscape of public health, Hallal said: How might climate change and global warming transform health needs? How can we address the coexistence of infectious diseases with chronic conditions, like hypertension and diabetes?

A target for the MPH online expansion is the non-traditional student population. The MPH program will offer six certificates: epidemiology, biostatistics, public health, one health, physical activity and health and health promotion.

“It’s the time for us to reach nontraditional students, we feel ready for it,” Schwingel said. “We want to keep the rigor, the quality that we’ve been giving students in their residential program to the online space as well.”

MHA: Making health administration accessible

The MHA program at Illinois is designed to prepare students for leadership in the healthcare industry.

What the MHA program has recently observed, according to KCH Assistant Professor Mina Raj, is an influx of requests for an online equivalent, especially among mid-career healthcare administrators.

“The pandemic has made salient how important the healthcare system is, and how important it is to have administrators who can respond to public health emergencies and other unpredictable situations,” Raj said.

The overriding goal for the online degree is accessibility, Raj said: What material can be packaged into a four-week or eight-week course? The MHA online degree will offer three professional certificates: health finance, healthcare quality and health informatics.

“I think for this group of professionals it’s really about giving them the context and rationale behind why certain decisions are made as administrators or within a healthcare organization, as well as the tools to anticipate the impacts or consequences of various administrative decisions,” Raj said. “We have faculty with different expertise, different professional backgrounds, and everyone is excited to teach these courses.”

The work has already begun for Barnes, who wants to incorporate seasoned industry experts into course content. Barnes came to the university after retiring from a 45-year career at Carle Foundation Hospital.

“I hope to use real clinicians, people doing the work like at Christie Clinic, Carle and OSF Healthcare to be part of the lectures, so that the students who are online, all over the world and all over the United States experience instruction through people who are actually doing the work,” Barnes said.

RST: Degrees for specialized industries

The Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism has been a leader in online education, debuting the first online master’s program in the discipline back in 2008.

But there wasn’t much fanfare, Stewart said. Online degrees were seen as “second-class programs” two decades ago.

“We were there at the beginning of the front to move online learning into a respectable degree process of education,” Stewart said.

Today, recreation, sport and tourism combine for an estimated $90 billion global set of industries. The pandemic resulted in a surge of public interest in leisure time and nature exploration, opening up new opportunities for professionals in the field, Stewart said.

“[RST] is about what we do in our free time to extend who we are and add value to our lives,” Stewart said. “We’ve come to embrace our needs for leisure-time activities in the last two years in ways that enhance our well-being and nurture our souls.”

The upcoming split of the current online master’s program into three tracks is a response to internal and external trends. Enrollment in the online MS in RST has plateaued in recent years, while other institutions have introduced their own online degrees in the discipline.

Meanwhile, the demands of the industry have become more specialized over time.

“There’s still a need for the generalist degree, but because of the growth, we are finding professionals out there who need more help with the specialty,” Stewart said.

Students and mid-career professionals will be able to enroll in a new slate of RST certificates in high-demand topics, including inclusive design, agricultural tourism, sport analytics, e-sport administration, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

The department is in the process of searching for a director of the RST online program, Stewart said, while tapping into a vast network of alumni to help develop new course content.

“Our alumni value the friends and faculty they came to know as students and find various ways to give back to the department,” Stewart said. “Many of our alums are leading remarkable careers in contexts related to recreation, sport and tourism; they readily share their expertise through assistance in course development, guest lectures, creating internship opportunities for our current students, and in some cases, teaching classes for us.

“Our students come here because they care about making people feel better, their well-being, their sense of community and health. They want to give back to the community and they want to give back to the department that gave them this path in life.”

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