Students in the College of Health Sciences are advised to have a Parallel Plan. A Parallel Plan can help address the question of “what if I do not get into my intended major?” One option for a parallel planning is selecting a Parallel Major.
- List your Parallel Major. Your Parallel Major must be an undergraduate degree offered here at ODU.
My parallel major I chose is a Bachelors of Science in Health Services Administration.
- Why did you choose this as your Parallel Major? What interests you about this major? I actually did not know this was a major offered at ODU until someone came to our Health 101 class and talked about it with us. I am interested in this major because I was in some leadership positions in high school and I really enjoyed it. I also thought it was interesting because it is a different aspect of health care.
- List some interesting facts about this major.
People in this major plan, direct, and coordinate medical and health services. People who pursue this major have a variety of places they can choose to work at. For example, one can work in a hospital, office setting, nursing homes, and outpatient facilities. People who work in this field have a lot of job opportunities such as Medical and Health Services Managers and Chief Executives.
- Research at least one career that you can do with this major and provide information on that career.
With this career, one could become a Health Services Manager. This career has a lot of roles and responsibilities. Some of these include managing processes of clinical teams, planning and organizing activities of a health clinic, form and update department plans, address any concerns in the business, set a direction for teams, guide them, and resolve issues for them. They also have to stay up to date on changing policies in their field. The skills one would need for this job include communication skills, attention to detail, analytical skills, and problem solving.
Create a plan for pursuing this major
If I were to pursue this major, I would still need to take a class in Information Literacy and Research, Human Creativity, Literature, and The Nature of Science. Those are for general education. There are also many classes I would need to take in the departmental requirements if I got accepted into the program. Some of these include Public Health Science, The U.S Healthcare delivery system, Ethics in Health Administration, a writing intensive class, finance and budgeting in healthcare,and many more.
How could you gain professional experiences to learn more about this area of study? One possible way I could go about gaining more professional experience is talking to people in the profession as well as doing more research. I could also see if there are any volunteer opportunities and do that. If I got into the program and further progressed in it, then I could try out an internship.
ODU List the advisor for this major (if Parallel Major is outside of the College of Health Sciences). Directory of Advisors website
Dr. Bellamy is the associate professor for undergraduate admissions.