Date: 2008-08-20
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Four new certificate programs will be offered for the first time this fall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focusing on societally pressing topics such as environmental responsibility in business, consumer health advocacy and global competitiveness.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Four new certificate programs will be offered for the first time this fall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focusing on societally pressing topics such as environmental responsibility in business, consumer health advocacy and global competitiveness.
University Communications writers Niki Fritz and Jill Sakai compiled these tips on the new programs, which are special groupings of advanced courses that allow students to go beyond an established degree program.
CERTIFICATE IN BUSINESS, ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
For more than a decade, Wisconsin School of Business professors Tom Eggert and Dan Anderson have been teaching their students about the benefits of being a socially and environmentally responsible company, and how this can contribute to the company's profits and revenues.
A few years ago, they decided that in addition to helping business students understand the environment they should teach environmental students the benefits of business.
With that idea, they joined with the Nelson Institute and began to develop a certificate designed to show environmental students the benefits of marketing and business. But when business graduate students heard about the certificate they wanted to participate as well.
"The certificate is the starting point of the joint effort between the Nelson Institute and the School of Business. It really is interdisciplinary," Eggert explains. "These people are coming from different perspectives and that makes the certificate stronger."
The certificate consists of 12 credits, including at least two classes in sustainability and then two more optional classes in either business or sustainability. The sustainability classes focus on both environmentally responsible business practices as well as on social responsiblity issues, such as health care access and equal rights.
Eggert says the goal of the certificate is really to train UW-Madison students for the new business world.
"We are not living in the same world that we were living in the 60s and 70s. Businesses are thinking proactively and anticipating the role that they are going to be playing in this new world," Eggert says. "In the past, all business worried about was making a profit. Business is still interested in making a profit, but they are seeing that to maximize their profit potential they have to account for environmental and social issues. We are trying to prepare students for this new consciousness, this new awareness of the role businesses play in society."
CONTACT: Tom Eggert, (608) 267-2761; teggert@bus.wisc.edu; Dan Anderson at (608) 263-5717, danderson@bus.wisc.edu, or see http://bus.wisc.edu/sustainability
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CERTIFICATE IN CONSUMER HEALTH ADVOCACY
Since 2001, students and faculty from the law, medicine and public health and nursing schools have been acting as patient advocates, helping patients make decisions on everything from treatment to finances to legal rights, as a part of the Center for Patient Partnerships.
Finally this year, students will be able to combine their experience at the center with classes across campus in the Consumer Health Advocacy Certificate.
It is a certificate that the center's associate director, Sarah Davis, says truly encompasses the efforts of UW-Madison to educate the best possible patient advocates for the current health care system.
"This interdisciplinary certificate really underscores the complexity of the health care experience for patients in the 21st century. We have courses all over campus," Davis says. "[The certificate] pulls together courses across campus from social work, business, economics, nursing, law, public affairs, medicine and industrial engineering so that advocates are well rounded and prepared to advocate for patients."
In addition to a base course on the health care system, students will earn six credits of clinical or service learning experience at the center or another patient advocate organization. Through that course work, students work directly with patients with life-threatening and serious chronic illnesses.
The certificate is currently offered to graduate and professional students in participating schools. Officials hope to have about 10 students enroll during the first semester.
"If this certificate raises the knowledge of advocacy and the importance of having advocacy skills, we have accomplished an important goal," Davis says.
CONTACT: Sarah Davis, (608) 265-6267, sdavis2@wisc.edu, or see http://www.law.wisc.edu/patientadvocacy/
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CERTIFICATE IN CULTURE, HISTORY, AND ENVIRONMENT
About six years ago, history of science Professor Gregg Mitman, along with colleagues Bill Cronon, Nancy Langston and Art McEvoy, started a lunchtime colloquium on environmental history to facilitate conversations with colleagues scattered across different departments around campus. As it quickly grew, he realized the demand on campus for an interdisciplinary forum on the topic.
"UW-Madison has faculty from many different disciplines really engaged in questions around the relationships between environmental and cultural change through the full sweep of human history," he says. "It's very intellectually stimulating, but it creates its own set of challenges."
In the spring of 2007, he helped created the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE) within the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. This interdisciplinary center formally brings together members of the campus community interested in the history of interactions between people and their environment.
The CHE is now offering a new certificate, available to master's and Ph.D. students from any related discipline, to help students take advantage of the myriad courses and faculty expertise in environmental history on campus.
Students choose a thematic area, such as environmental literature or environment and health, and build their own program from three elective courses drawn from at least two of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The certificate also requires an interdisciplinary class in environmental history research methods developed specifically for the program.
"It gives graduate students exposure to the many different ways of thinking about environmental history - through anthropology, through history, through history of science, though rural sociology" to name a few, Mitman says.
Students will also participate in "place-based workshops," which examine a location - such as the Apostle Islands region or Chicago - through the different disciplinary lenses that feed into environmental history, to understand the numerous human-environment interactions that have shaped the region over time.
"It's really the students who have driven this [certificate]," Mitman says. "They've been doing it on their own already, but this helps channel ideas and bring them visibility."
CONTACT: Gregg Mitman, (608) 262-9140, gmitman@med.wisc.edu, or see http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/grad/che/.
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CERTIFICATE IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
For several years, the School of Education has required its students to take three credits of non-western contemporary culture to help expose students to a globalizing world. But Associate Dean Ken Zeichner and his colleagues thought students deserved to learn even more about the interconnected world in which they would soon be teaching.
"The idea is that teachers in the public school should be teaching from a global perspective. We thought the three-credit requirement was not enough," Zeichner explains. "We wanted a broad certificate that focused on non-western history and contemporary culture. We want all undergraduates to have the opportunity to gain more global perspective."
The certificate, which is open to all School of Education majors, consists of 21 credits, including 12 non-western courses and a three-credit capstone as well as six additional credits.
In addition to teaching new global values, the School of Education will also be studying its own program to see if it prepares students to teach from a global perspective. As Zeichner explains, many schools have been focusing on globalization but few have investigated how this change affects students. The School of Education will be tracking students of the certificate to see how it affects their readiness to teach.
"This certificate is an opportunity for undergraduates to develop a more comprehensive global view, to view themselves as world citizens. For all undergrads, it will build a respect for diversity and treat all people with dignity and respect," Zeichner says. "Today we need to develop their cultural competence."
CONTACT: Ken Zeichner, (608) 262-6136 or zeichner@facstaff.wisc.edu