Late last year, healthcare surpassed manufacturing and retail to become the largest source of jobs in the United States. At Wingate, we were ready. Our variety of professional programs join pure science with practical, clinical care so that you can put your knowledge to work improving the well-being of others. We’ve also designed our undergrad science curricula with distinct pathways to get you to your passion faster.
How we think, behave and relate to one another makes society work or prevents it from working. Understanding cultural context and exploring ways to help make life better for individuals and the larger community are two of many challenges facing those in the social sciences. That’s why hands-on learning and research are hallmarks of Wingate’s criminal justice, human services, psychology and sociology programs.
Whether your goal is to guide the young, create a lifelong passion for an active lifestyle or work with a professional sports organization, you can begin your journey in Wingate’s School of Sport Sciences. Courses that delve into sport law and education theory and exposure to the latest sports research help prepare our students, as do hands-on experiences with teams from prep level to pro.
Competitive? Yes. Collaborative? Definitely. But creative? Absolutely. Students in Wingate’s Porter B. Byrum School of Business get a broad understanding of what it takes to survive in an ever-changing marketplace. Whether pursuing one of our five undergraduate business degrees or working on a capstone project in our master’s programs, our students put their own passions in the foreground and refuse to be satisfied with business as usual.
It is true that teachers touch the future, but at Wingate, they can start having an impact in the present. Our teacher education majors begin field experiences in K-12 settings during the first half of their freshmen year and continue each semester to engage in hands-on learning that integrates theory and practice. The Thayer School of Education offers 11 undergraduate majors in addition to master’s and doctorate programs tailored especially for working adults.
From American government to zoology, the diatonic scale to scalene triangles, the poems of Robert Frost to the thawing of permafrost — there’s a lot to study in the arts and sciences at Wingate. No matter your major, our Global Perspectives (GPS) core curriculum will help you learn to think critically, understand global cultures and write and speak clearly. With GPS, you can set your own course.
Launching Fall 2021
How do government actions, access to healthcare and education affect the spread, treatment and prevention of disease? Do other factors such as funding, ethics and communication within the health system play a role?
These are all questions you'll be able to investigate and answer as you study Public Health at Wingate University. More importantly, you’ll discover through experiential learning how you can make a difference in the health of your community, your nation or even in the world.
Wingate’s Public Health major will include coursework in social sciences, health education, global health, epidemiology, statistics, healthcare management/ systems, and health ethics. High school courses that could help you excel in the Public Health program include statistics, sociology, health science and foreign language. Psychology, environmental science, chemistry and biology can also help give you a solid foundation.
If you major in Public Health at Wingate you should be ready to research and write about anything from listeria links to enoki mushrooms to vaccine compliance among minorities. You can expect to learn about biostatistics, environmental health and health education. And you can expect to work closely with faculty members as you prepare for an internship or capstone project with one of our community partners.
Wingate’s public health bachelor's degree program will feature an interdisciplinary approach with an emphasis on the social sciences and statistics.
Discipline-specific courses will include:
Classes will be taught by graduate health sciences professors and undergraduate liberal arts faculty, and the program will meet criteria established by the Council on Education for Public Health.
The public health degree will require internships or special capstone projects to be completed in conjunction with community organizations. Students apply what they are learning in the classroom to real-world experiences, a skill that future employers want.
At Wingate, we take our commitment to service seriously and have teamed with a variety of organizations in the area through our Collaborative for the Common Good to improve the welfare of our neighbors. You may wind up working closely with Union County Public Schools, the Union County Health Department, Heart for Monroe or many other organizations that can give you firsthand “boots-on-the-ground” experience in exchange for your developing expertise.Although the programs won’t officially be underway until fall 2021, current rising sophomores and incoming freshmen can declare public health as their major and begin taking general prerequisites.
To smooth the pathway toward the master’s degree, Wingate is developing a 4+1 track whereby qualified students could take a combination of undergrad and graduate courses during their fourth year and graduate with their MPH in a total of just five years.
Public health professionals are leading the nation’s response to the COVID19 pandemic through surveillance, testing, modeling, and education. They are on the front lines, making a difference in the health and safety of the American
public.
Public Health is a great field for someone interested in health and wellness but doesn’t want to provide direct patient care or take advanced chemistry and biology.
- Laura Happe, PharmD, MPH Associate Professor
