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HA Program Philosophy

What Students Can Expect of the HA Program, and What the HA Program Expects of Them

General Orientation

As noted in the Curriculum description in the Auburn University Bulletin, the HA Program seeks to "help prepare students for careers in such fields as hospital administration, health planning, nursing home administration, government health administration, and other areas" of health administration.

Our Commitments

To Educate Our Students

The HA Program recognizes the importance of encouraging students to develop and maintain not only articulate speech, literate writing, and essential quantitative skills, but also that broad, humane outlook which is displayed by any person in the human community generally acknowledged to be educated. Included in such an outlook are the possession of an inquiring mind, a tolerance for differing perspectives, and a commitment to ethical standards of behavior.

To Involve Our Students

Students in HA are recognized as adults, with both adult rights and adult responsibilities. Accordingly, student input on all aspects of the Program is welcomed; in particular, in major matters of Program direction and development, the Program Director seeks to involve the Executive Board of the Auburn University Health and Hospital Administration Organization (HHAO) elected by students in HA. As a further recognition of the importance of student input into Program operations, each professor in HA is evaluated by his/her students during every offering of every HA course taught.

To Encourage Responsibility

Because students are recognized as adults, no harm is done by expecting them to cope with adult mental tasks suitable to their abilities; no good is accomplished by expecting less. In this regard, HA faculty are expected to set an appropriate example by not only maintaining a high quality of instruction but also by carrying out their own programs of research, professional involvement and public service, sharing their involvement in these with students as appropriate.

As part of their responsibilities, HA students are expected to develop a commitment to professional norms of behavior, for example, by maintaining awareness of current Program developments through the advising process and by regularly consulting the HA web site and the HA Bulletin Board , which are maintained primarily for the purpose of student information. Students are also expected to carefully examine all relevant Program handouts (or their World Wide Web equivalents), as well as syllabi and associated handouts in their classes.

To Provide Quality Advising

Close contact between HA students and their HA faculty advisers is encouraged. It is the policy of the Program that each student should be seen personally at pre-registration each quarter by an appropriate adviser. Ideally, an HA student is assigned to a particular HA faculty adviser for at least two years. The nature of the advising process dictates that the adviser offers each student a careful analysis of options in any given situation, but that the student makes the final decision as to what choice to select.

To Promote Tolerance

The HA Program strives to foster an atmosphere in which students and faculty can interact free from hindrances caused by discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, belief, income, disabling condition, or personal lifestyle. The Program also seeks to promote the participation of minorities in its work and to make students aware of the need for the modern health administrator to be capable of serving the diverse needs of a multicultural society.

To Assist Our Graduates

HA Program obligations to students do not cease at their graduation. Reasonable efforts are made by both the HA Program and the larger University to assist students in placement. Efforts of the Program are focused on three areas:

Pre-graduation placement counselling, which begins in the most basic core courses of the program;
Continued maintenance of a network of HA alumni who can assist students in placement;
Attempts to link graduates with appropriate placements in job positions or graduate study, according to the intentions of the individual student.

In the final analysis, of course, individual graduates must take responsibility for the outcome of their efforts; students are not encouraged to assume that a diploma is an automatic permit to a job or graduate admissions.

To Maintain Relevance

Although innovation for the sake of novelty is never an appropriate goal, the HA Program acknowledges that shifting trends in such areas as administrative techniques, economics, social movements and technology necessitate periodic re-evaluations of approaches not only in the sense of the substantive information and methods taught through the Program but also in regard to the goals, objectives and techniques of the Program itself. During such re-revaluations, input is sought from faculty, alumni, students and working administrators. Indeed, new information which may not be readily available to Program faculty, but which may be more obvious to other groups, may provide vital indicators for new and beneficial directions in continued Program development. To aid in the maintenance of standards appropriate to the contemporary administrative environment, both the Program and its parent Department of Political Science have identified Program membership in the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) as an essential goal.

To Promote Broad Vision

The well educated person is capable of both abstract thinking and day-to-day applications. The HA Program seeks to promote a unified perspective in which students are encouraged to look beyond artificially imposed divisions between "theoretical" and "practical" knowledge to pursue the vital interconnections of thought and action which underlie all civilized human existence.

HA Program Philosophy Page by MB (last updated 11/11/97)