2004 NACE Excellence Awards
Educational Programming—College Winner
“The Public Health Degree Planner”
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Students who know what career path they want to pursue use less time and fewer resources from a career center. The career services office at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University helps students interested in a public health career through a web-based tool that can be used for industry career exploration and decision-making.
The Degree Planner aims to educate undergraduate students and others about opportunities within the field, to link public health majors to careers, to assist current public health students in defining their career options, and to market the Bloomberg School to prospective.
The number of career counseling appointments in the year immediately
before implementation of the Degree Planner was 304, but decreased
to 264 the following year.
“We believe that this decrease directly correlates with the number of current students who have used the Degree Planner in the career decision-making process,” explains Betty Addison, director of career services and disability support at the Bloomberg School. “Career counselors have indicated that students who have used the Degree Planner have a greater awareness of the career options available to them, which tends to accelerate the career decision-making process.”
The Degree Planner allows users to explore all the possible connections among four areas—public health topics, academic degrees, departments, and careers.
For the 2002-03 academic year, the Bloomberg School received 1,812 applications, and 2,041 for the 2003-04 academic year—a 12 percent increase. The school also has seen a 10 percent increase in applications for the 2004-05 academic year and a 27 percent increase in inquiries: 10,620 for 2004 compared with 8,351 for 2003.
“We were able to directly attribute the increase in inquiries to the request form at the end of the Degree Planner that allows the user to request information and provide feedback on the tool,” Addison notes.
An online statistical management system is tied to the Degree Planner and provides an overview of the site’s traffic. Since the program’s 2002 launch, there have been more than 319,000 page views. About 2,150 prospective students have requested admission materials after using the Degree Planner.
“We have also seen a 25 percent increase in the number of
enrolled master of health science students, a group targeted by
the Planner,” Addison adds.
