by Jennifer Kowalewski

OU-COM recently has partnered with Columbus Public Schools and Columbus State Community College to help disadvantaged students attend to Ohio University.

And, if things go as planned, most of these students will become health-care professionals.

The Pathways Institute Partnership was made possible by the $1.8 million Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP) grant to OU-COM, in which is included support for the partnership. The $1.8 million grant funds OU-COM’s HCOP from 2005 to 2008. HCOP is part of the college’s Center of Excellence for Multicultural Medicine.

“We’ve had an HCOP grant here at OU-COM since 1987,” says Elizabeth Minor, HCOP director. It has grown into a comprehensive grant making possible a pipeline of programs that prepare students, as early as the sixth grade, for careers in the health-care fields.

The grant targets disadvantaged students, such as those from lower income families or those whose parents never attended college. Unlike grants that specifically support minority students, HCOP covers a larger population of students.

The health-care industry has a general shortage of people entering it, says Minor, and the federal Health Resource and Services Administration’s HCOP is designed to address that shortage.

“Our program educates and encourages young people that likely don’t know that there are very good career opportunities in the health-care industry. We want them to know that they have options and help them reach their goals,” she says.

The Pathways Institute Partnership includes seven middle schools, three health academies and Columbus State as well as community resources. Pathways came about, in part, because of Minor’s chance meeting with John Francis, M.B.A., Ph.D., a Columbus State biochemistry professor. Minor says she and Francis began a conversation abroad a plane in 2001 about what they did at their institutions that culminated in Pathways Institute Partnership four years later.

The Pathways Institute mentors students in middle school through high school and prepares them for admission to Columbus State.  For students who want to continue their education beyond two-year degrees and earn four-year degrees, it becomes a doorway into Ohio University. From there, students seeking professional degrees in health-care areas can apply for entrance into OU-COM or the School of Physical Therapy.

Through Pathways in Columbus, says Minor, HCOP works with students at the middle schools and health academies. A health academy is a high school that specializes in health career fields. Pathway’s health academies are East High, West High and Linden-McKinley High.

“They fit very nicely with HCOP’s aims,” she says. 

“We will double the number of students in our programs,” Minor said. “And for the first time, we will have the opportunity to start with the same students in middle school that we end with in college.

“We don’t have ‘contiguous pipelines’ in the other communities that we serve,” she says. There may be a middle school program in one community and a high school program in another — and HCOP does partner with Upward Bound in communities — but the Columbus “middle school-through-college” pipeline established by Pathways was our first in any community, says Minor. In Southeastern Ohio, HCOP works with students in the Alexander, Meigs and Trimble middle schools as well as with high school students in Dayton.

The Pathways Institute also reinforces the framework for Columbus State to mesh with Ohio University in academic areas outside of the arts and sciences as well.

An articulation agreement was made so that Columbus State students could transfer their credits to Ohio University without losing any — and circumvents Columbus State students unnecessarily retaking similar courses at the university.

“That had been a major concern for transfer students. But before President Glidden retired, he signed off on the articulation agreement,” says Minor.

Because of the agreement and the Course Applicability System, Columbus State students are able to go online and see what courses are offered at Columbus State that will match up with Ohio University courses. This also is a big plus for students who want to transfer to the university.

With this agreement, Ohio University opens the way to serving a larger population of disadvantaged students and will help diversify its student body, two main objectives of Ohio President Roderick McDavis, Ph.D.

“Now we are linked to Columbus State, not only in the health career fields but to any of OU’s academic areas,” says Minor. “Because of this, the Pathways Institute Partnership can serve OU in a larger way than recruiting students just for health careers.”