Service Learning and Internships
Undergraduate
The B.S. in Public Health major utilizes a service-learning approach to integrate community-based learning opportunities with classroom instruction. Faculty partner with community agencies to design service experiences that not only enhance student learning, but also meet a need of the community. Depending on the choice of concentration, public health students complete 160-330 hours of service-learning work. These hours are accrued while being engaged in campus-based health promotion (PHP 221), addressing social determinants of health (PHP 309), and understanding diversity (PHP 310). Students may additionally explore and develop skills in health writing, illustration, photography and layout/design in the context of developing the annual Healthy You Magazine for the Syracuse University community (PHP 227). Service learning culminates in PHP 422: the Senior Capstone Internship. In addition to the regional internship sites listed in the link below, students may consider completing the capstone internship while studying abroad in Kenya or India, or while in the semester-away Maxwell in Washington DC program.
For more information about the Senior Capstone Internship, see the related handbook for this experience.
View Senior Capstone Internship Posters
Graduate
Master of Public Health students are required to complete a 3-credit, 135 hour Applied Practice Experience (APE). This experience provides students the opportunity to work with partner organizations and engage in a public health project. Students apply knowledge and skills learned in the classroom to demonstrate program competencies in an applied practice setting located in the U.S. or international context. As part of the APE, students develop deliverables for partner organizations and present their work in a professional portfolio. The experience may be completed fall, spring, or summer semesters after the completion of at least 18 credits of MPH coursework. Students also have the option to partner with a community agency when completing the Integrative Learning Experience (ILE). This experience demonstrates synthesis of MPH foundational and concentration competencies and is completed near the end of the students’ MPH program.
View APE Projects and ILE Capstone Projects
For more information about the Applied Practice Experience, see the related handbook.