Health Professions Advising
Welcome to Health Professions Advising
The Health Professions Advisor (HPA) provides support to students and alumni pursing graduate education and careers in the health fields (e.g., medical and dental school). HPA coordinates closely with the Career Development Office (CDO) and the Graduate School Advisor (GSA) to provide students, alumni, and academic advisors with support and resources.
Please review the Health Professions Advising Handbook for 2023-2024. It offers information on career options, what to consider when choosing a career, how to schedule courses at SUA to complete prerequisite coursework, enrichment opportunities, and what steps students must take to be successful candidates when they decide to apply to medical and dental schools.
HPA speaker series
Health Professions Advising at SUA frequently hosts clinicians, researchers, and industry specialists, and public health practitioners to give talks on their career path, research/specialty, and other domains of their work. Previous speakers include Dr. Brianna Barbosa-Angles, DO MPH and Lisa Barbosa-Angles, MA, RN-BSN, Dr. Cynthia Bowa, MD MPH (Zambian Delegation in Japan), Dr. Vernard S. Fennell, MD MSc (Ochsner Medical Center / Tulane University School of Medicine), Dr. Tatiana Moylan, MD (Yale School of Medicine), Dr. Erika Noel, MD (Hawai’i Pacific Health), Marc Baker-Bourgeois, RN CRNA (Lahey Hospital & Medical Center), Onyemaechi C Onyekwu, CNM (Boston Medical Center), and Daniel S. Wong, PhD (Formerly Clearview Healthcare Partners, BeiGene USA). We greatly appreciate the contributions these speakers, especially as they have provided insights into how SUA students and graduates can use their humanistic and multidisciplinary education in health careers.
SUA-ISAAC Youth Health Advocacy Internship
SUA’s Career Development Office and Health Professions Advising are partnering with the International School for Science and Culture (ISAAC) in Costa Mesa on a collaborative youth health advocacy program and corresponding SUA student internship. The purpose of the health advocacy program is to improve health literacy among ISAAC students and allow them to explore and collaborate with SUA interns on health issues directly relevant to the lives of young people in Orange County. SUA health advocacy interns teach ISAAC students from grades TK – 8 about different organ systems in the human body and help demonstrate the application of that knowledge to daily life. Interns also support older ISAAC students on longitudinal projects on a health topic of their choosing (e.g., nutrition and community gardens in Orange County, neurotransmitters and mindfulness, diverse bodies with diverse abilities). This opportunity allows SUA interns to learn about and grapple with topics related to health, especially applied to young people from diverse and often marginalized backgrounds, like those at the ISAAC school. Interns gain experience in shaping and delivering heath literacy and advocacy curricula. They also gain skills in leadership, teamwork, and mentoring of young people in their local community.
Applications for the 2024 internship program are now closed.
Clinical Neurosurgery Preceptorship
Dr. Vernard S. Fennell and his colleagues at Ochsner Medical Center and Tulane University School of Medicine Department of Neurosurgery offer select Soka University of America students the opportunity to participate in a 10 to 12-week summer neurosurgery clinical and research preceptorship in New Orleans, Louisiana. Students spend the summer rotating in the neurosurgery operating room, clinic, and neuroanatomy research laboratory gaining exposure to direct patient care and contributing to the department’s research. This is an excellent opportunity for students to gain knowledge, skills, and experience beyond what they can acquire in a classroom setting and expand their professional networks. It also provides them a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge biomedical research and direct patient care during their undergraduate studies. Generous donor funding supports transportation and lodging for selected students.
The summer 2024 preceptorship application is now closed.
Clinical Skills Lab
The Clinical Skills Lab offers our undergraduate students the opportunities to learn and practice hands-on clinical skills often not taught until medical school clerkship years. These skills include taking a patient history, basic physical exam, suturing, surgical knot-tying, and laparoscopic surgical simulation. The aim of the lab is to strengthen our students’ clinical skills, empower them beyond academic classroom opportunities, and increase health literacy across our campus by engaging the broader community through outreach events. The lab also includes a library featuring a range of MCAT study resources, medical textbooks, as well as fiction and nonfiction works written about clinical care and other relevant topics. By combining hands-on clinical skills practice and these additional resources, we hope to create a fun and safe learning environment for all our future clinicians and other interested students.
Health Professions Advisor
