My situation is a little unique so here's a little background to clarify. I have 30 years of experience in patient care as and EMT, CNA & Patient Care tech / health insurance/ billing & auditing etc. I have been teaching at the community college level for 9 years in EMS / Sports Medicine / Combat Lifesaver / Medical Assisting / Medical Coding Instructor. I love teaching in allied health and related areas. I have developed entire programs of study for both classroom and online. I have taught both ways using WebCT, Blackboard and Moodle. I have always been able to teach based on my work experience and certifications. I recently moved from the Con Ed side to Curriculum, so my educational needs are changing. Now I'm finishing my BS in health care management at Excelsior and looking at graduate school for the fall. My problem is what degree do I go for? We are a SACS school. My Dean suggested I get my MBA so I can teach business classes...not my cup of tea! I wouldn't mind healthcare management type classes, which we are hoping to start as an AS program shortly, but I can't do accounting or econ classes. I thought about an MPH or MSHA or MHA, but I don't know what that would allow me to teach. I'm also concerned that since I live in a very rural area, education job opportunities may be limited so I want to be marketable to other schools via DL opportunities or in the private healthcare sector. I haven't been able to find much in the way of degree requirements for teaching in various disciplines in my state. I'm looking at a few graduate certificates, but I want to maximize my "teaching disciplines" with my Master's. I love teaching and envision teaching in some capacity for the rest of my working career. I'm hoping the experts here with much more experience in this area can help guide me in the right direction. I have tried looking on Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com without much luck. I even looked on the SACS website, hoping to find a guide of what degree allows you teach in what disciplines, but didn't find anything. I just want to keep my options open so I'm not limited to just a few classes. If those classes don't make, I won't have a job! Thanks in advance for your help!
To me, a MSHA or MSA would make more sense for you. I don't see much use for an MPH at the CC level. Check out the first two links on this page: http://www.spcollege.edu/Central/hr/Faculty_Credentialing.htm . Look up the courses you are interested in teaching and see what they require. It is all based on SACS requirements. For the most part, you need a masters degree and 18 hours in the subject you which to teach.
Thanks! I'm off to check out the link. I looked all over the SACS site to find such info, but couldn't. My concern is, the classes I'm teaching now are not in a transferable program and there are no graduate level courses. I'm hoping if we get approved to start a healthcare management program, that an MSHA would cover me. Right now, my Dean plans on using mosting business prefixes to cover the courses, so I'm concerned they might want an MBA instead. Since worrying about SACS requirements is new to me, I want to make sure I don't close any doors or limit myself down the road. Thanks again!
It sounds as if the answer is already made for you! If your Dean is going to use people who have an MBA to teach the healthcare management courses, then it seems that you will need an MBA. You should try talking to your Dean to see if he or she will permit you to use a MSHA to teach the healthcare management courses. The MBA vs some other sort of healthcare degree seems to be a common argument. Where I work, they seek out faculty members who have healthcare graduate degrees to teach all of the healthcare courses except the management or administration ones. For the management or administration ones they go with MBA's or leadership degrees, unless the prospective faculty member specifically works in healthcare management or healthcare administration.
Sounds like an MBA with a specialization in Healthcare Administration would cover your bases. NCU has such a program http://www.ncu.edu/academics/courses.aspx?degree_program_code=MBA&dp_version_id=9&dpro_section_main_id=40
Hi Fritzy, you might send a private message to Truckie270, a regular poster who is also an EMT and has an MBA and a MPA. Truckie also teaches in similar areas and might have some insight into what areas you could look at. In your message you said "but I can't do accounting or econ classes." Do you mean that you can't take and pass an accounting/econ class or just that ou don't want to teach them? Regarding SACS and what you are allowed to teach: Since there isn't a Masters Program anywhere in, say, healthcare billing, a lot of times it's up to the school and dean to say what an instructor is qualified to teach. If you want to teach general healthcare-administration classes, I'd say an MBA or an MPA or MHA would all allow you to teach those and give you flexibility to teach others. If you get into specialty areas like healthcare marketing or finance, then the 18-credit hour rule may apply. There's also a new MPH thread in the main forum that may have some good schools listed. http://www.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=32828 Good luck! Hope you find a program that works for you.
Fritzy, here is a link to SACS faculty Qualifications: SACS Faculty Credentials as always, please check with the school you want to teach at for some guidance since each school might have other requirements. regards,
It sounds like the best degree has been selected for you. Maybe you could look into an MBA in Healthcare. The accounting or econ classes are not that hard and if you only have to do one of them it is not so bad.
Thanks for all the great advice. It's not that I find accounting or econ classes hard, but they are not my favorite subject matter. I prefer to teach only what I like, otherwise I don't feel I can offer the excitement and energy my students deserve. How can I motivate them, if I'm not motivated by the material myself? It's just a personal preference issue and I want to give my students the best I can offer. I just don't think I can do that in these types of classes. Mind you have several great friends that are accountants, but it just doesn't float my boat! It's all I can do to get through doing our family taxes every year! I'm off to check out more links you have provided. Thanks so much for all the insight! The muddy waters are starting to clear a little!
Would accounting and econ be subjects you would have to teach? By the way, I agree - you should never teach a subject you find boring. It is not fair to the students.
Randall, I would probably be able to pick the classes I wanted to teach and avoid accounting and econ. We have several business instructors who like teaching those classes. Our Dean is very new in her position and this division, so she couldnt' offer me any suggestions except to tell me that if I got my MBA I could teach accounting and econ along with some of my current classes. She didn't even know the SACS requirements or school requirements when I asked. This is how I ended up here. I'm very excited with the NCU program. It would allow me to end up with an MBA and specialization in healthcare admin. It also breaks it up into two 18 credit tracks, so that should set me up with two teaching disciplines if I'm reading the SACS requirements and NCU program correctly. This is very exciting and exactly what I was hoping existed. Thanks!
I know what you mean. I have an MBA and a Masters in Economics, but I would never never never never never want to teach an accounting class.
Fritzy, do you already have a bachelor's degree, or would you have to work on that first? If you do need a bachelor's, TESC would be a great choice. When I started on the path to my bachelor's degree, I had already been a community college teacher for about 15-16 years at that time. I taught in the culinary program. Thomas Edison www.tesc.edu will award teachers credit (no charge) as long as the class they teach doesn't duplicate a class they took as a student. I had a lot of these since I had been there so long- and I ended up getting 27 credits which all counted as free electives. *had I been working on a hospitality degree they would have been in my major, but I was going for a liberal arts degree, so that's why they were electives. Anyway, this isn't the same as prior learning credit, which typically costs $$$. Just thought I'd share in the event that you might need the credit.
The SACS faculty qualifications are guidelines, not regulations. A common misconception is that SACS requires 18 graduate semester hours in a discipline in order to teach courses in that discipline. What SACS requires is that the institution documents how a given faculty member is qualified to teach his or her assigned courses (they look at specific courses, rather than just disciplines, so a faculty member will a degree in statistics could teach statistics courses in departments of psychology, business, education, math, etc. The faculty qualification guidelines provide the easiest route for justifying that an instructor is qualified to teach the class. They are (in order of preference): 1. Terminal degree is the teaching area 2. Masters degree in the teaching area 3. Masters degree and a concentration (i.e. 18 graduate semester hours) in the teaching area If one possesses one of these, then that is all that wehave to put on the faculty qualifications for for SACS. However, if we have a very qualified application (such as yourself), we would document the work/field experience, teaching experience, courses and training, certifications, etc. that qualify the instructor to teach a given class. Some departments also have programmatic accreditation which sometimes dictates faculty degree requirements (e.g. a certain percentage of the faculty must possess terminal degrees). Although having your highest degree in the discipline area in which you teach is desirable, there tends to be some allowance for faculty with, say, doctorates outside the subject area (e.g. education). As far as SACS is concerned, the main thing is to take courses in the areas that you wish to teach (even if your degree is in another area) and document your experience and qualifications to teach those courses.
