About Us!
OUR MISSION
Public Health Peer Advising is an organization available for Public Health undergraduate students as a resource to help peers with course and scheduling planning, graduation application, or other major/minor questions. PHPA also host course planning group and career workshops.
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OUR HISTORY
Before 2012, there were already Health Science Peer Advisors (HSPA) who were helping with faculty advising. HSPA was not part of a recognized club but had regular supervision by a faculty member Brian Grossman. Grossman left in 2013, and the undergraduate program went through a series of changes in which the peer advisors provided crucial support during this time.
In Spring 2016, Miranda Worthen started advising a group of Health Science Peer Advisors and decided to make the organization an independently recognized student organization. The student leads, Kathy Nguyen and Lisa MacKean, at that time had a vision of being more of ongoing support for students with course planning and other navigational tasks. The organization received formal recognition in August 2016 and was a fully functional student organization for the academic year 2016-2017. In Spring 2017, new officers were elected and transitioned the name to Public Health Peer Advisors (PHPA), in coordination with our change of major name. At that point, PHPA included a contract for student hours. From Fall 2017-Spring 2018, the structure of the organization was similar and the group was under Worthen's supervision. In Fall 2018, the Department of Public Health and Recreation brought on a faculty advising coordinator, Felicia Noonis, who also began coordinating the peer advisors. |