The Health Careers Resource Center at UNO seeks to successfully guide interested students into future training and careers in healthcare. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that in the next ten years, more than half of the top twenty careers experiencing the most growth will be in healthcare. The HCRC assists students in exploring these potential career paths. The center hosts pre-health and professional programs and events to help interested students explore different healthcare professionals. The center also provides professional healthcare career and academic counseling to students. Read more about the HCRC from Director Paul Davis, Ph.D., below.
UNO is focusing on internships and other experiential learning opportunities that help their students and the community at the same time. Chancellor Joanne Li, Ph.D., CFA, is excited about the possibilities—and the way that UNO can serve as a facilitator in meeting workforce needs.
The opening weekend will feature a wide array of events and activities. At the Museum, visitors will be able to view 53 works of Samuel Bak – a world-renowned artist and Holocaust survivor whose surrealist paintings encourage reflection and conversation around human rights – in an inaugural exhibition titled “In the Beginning: The Artist Samuel Bak."
Midlands Voices: Solving the workforce crisis will require a culture shift in higher education
As the demand for a well-educated workforce rises, UNO Chancellor Joanne Li, Ph.D., CFA has authored a new op-ed demonstrating how UNO and higher education as an industry have both an opportunity and a responsibility to respond to community needs and increase the social mobility of all learners.
UNO Chancellor Named a Director of Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Omaha Branch
UNO Chancellor Joanne Li, Ph.D., CFA, was appointed to the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Omaha branch. She will serve a three year term on the board.
Top administrators aren't just showing up for Omaha sports, they're promoting them
UNO Chancellor Joanne Li, Ph.D., CFA, and other top administrators have embraced UNO athletics and make it a point to be at events, bringing the community together at UNO.
In this installment, Caleb Ross, a Cardiac Exercise Physiologist at Children's Hospital and Medical Center, shares his UNO journey. Ross continues to help UNO students find opportunities of their own in his current role through lasting connections with faculty members and internship coordinators.
UNO Health Careers Resource Center Helps Prepare the Next Generation of Healthcare Workers
By Paul Davis, Ph.D.
Health Careers Resource Center Director
UNO efforts in the community include preparing the next generation of healthcare workers for Nebraska. The campus attracts nearly 3,000 pre-health students to majors in Biology, Medical Humanities, Chemistry, Bioinformatics, and several more and prepares them to succeed at every level of healthcare training at UNMC and other regional campuses. In recent years, UNO’s success rate at placing students has risen dramatically due to the standing up of the Health Careers Resource Center (HCRC), a career and academic advising office dedicated to students pursuing healthcare careers. This unique-to-the-state office allows UNO to foster in our students not just the needed academic preparation, but the extracurricular prowess so often sought in successful pre-health students. For example, since the creation of the HCRC, medical school admissions of UNO students have tripled, and now consistently beat national averages.
Working closely with UNMC College of Medicine, the HCRC co-led the creation of the Urban Health Opportunities Program (UHOP) at UNO in 2016. The mission of UHOP isto diversify the urban Nebraska healthcare workforce by preparing students from underrepresented groups to excel in health professions training and to provide care for medically underserved populations of urban Nebraska. Modeling the program after others top universities in the nation, UNO structured this program to provide complete academic and life-success wrap-around services to UHOP scholars. This includes a first-year experience course, provided tutoring through all years of training, and hands-on academic and career advising. This is matched with connections to UNMC faculty members who serve as future academic mentors and career guides to these undergraduate students. The result of this program speaks for itself: Over the last three years, 77% of our UHOP students have been successful in entering medical school, and 100% of those have graduated UNMC or are on track to do so. This percentage is higher than many other programs nationally. Our most senior cohort has now entered their residency training programs. Possibilities are now being explored of expanding this program to other health professions.
Relatedly, UNO’s HCRC also serves as host organization to the Omaha Area Health Education Center (AHEC), a federally funded program designed to “improve the supply, distribution, retention and quality of primary care and other health practitioners in medically underserved areas.” A keystone effort is the Omaha AHEC Scholars Program: an interprofessional and extracurricular program for dozens of health professions students in the Omaha area. This program aims to equip scholars with competency and experience in areas such as cultural intelligence, behavioral health integration, and social determinants of health which are often tied to race, culture, and economic situation. The Omaha AHEC provides this program to the most diverse set of scholars in the state of Nebraska, and focuses on preparing others to be more fully sensitive to the needs of patients among culturally diverse populations of Omaha.
The HCRC director, a professor of Biology, oversees federally funded research to develop new medicines against diseases found in developing countries which threaten the local population but also our U.S. military service personnel serving abroad. Relatedly, the HCRC works closely with UNO’s Military-Connected Resource Center to ensure that current and prospective military and veteran pre-health students have access to high-caliber, coordinated advising as they pursue future healthcare careers.
Want to visit campus to better understand UNO, our impact on the state, and our faculty's varied areas of expertise? Schedule a visit.
/people/Chancellor%20Li/UComm%20--%20MDBE%20--%20Chancellor%20Li%20Future%20of%20Work%2022.jpg?upscale=true&width=520&upscale=true&name=UComm%20--%20MDBE%20--%20Chancellor%20Li%20Future%20of%20Work%2022.jpg)
