JOHNSON CITY (May 6, 2020) – In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, East Tennessee State University is offering several online summer courses across multiple disciplines that are related to the pandemic and its effects on society.
“The COVID-19 crisis has affected every person and every class at ETSU,” said Dr. Wilsie Bishop, interim provost and senior vice president for academics. “I am proud of the way ETSU has responded to the crisis and how quickly our faculty have adapted courses and used their expertise to create new courses that address subject matter and challenges associated with the pandemic.
“This summer, our students have the opportunity to navigate issues like telehealth, disaster preparedness and other important topics related to COVID-19 alongside faculty members who are experts in these areas.”
Unless otherwise noted, these summer course offerings do not require any prerequisites and are open to current ETSU students and to the public. Current ETSU students and non-degree seeking students who are interested in taking a summer course at ETSU can learn more and request additional information at www.etsu.edu/summer or by emailing cssummersessions@etsu.edu.
- ANTH 4957 Culture, Health & the COVID-19 Pandemic: Students enrolled in this course, which is offered during the pre-summer session, will use interviews and photographs to create an ethnographic project that will document the sociocultural aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This course is offered by permit only.
- COBH 1020 Introduction to Public Health: Offered during the first summer session, this course familiarizes students with the field of public health, including the history and current practices, especially those practices involved with the current pandemic. Major cultural, social, economic, organizational, and environmental factors influencing public health issues and practices at the local, state, national and international levels will be presented.
- COBH 2950 Emergency and Disaster Preparedness for Home and Community: Offered during the first summer session, this course exposes students to essential components of emergency and disaster preparedness for individual homes and communities. Students are introduced to various preparedness activities and operations necessary in anticipation of emergency situations which includes pandemics (e.g. COVID-19), tornadoes, earthquakes, and other disasters. Emphasis is placed on customizing preparation activities to the home and community environments. The unique issues of special needs individuals and at-risk populations are explored.
- COBH 3950 Emergency and Disaster Preparedness for Organizations and Systems: Offered during the second summer session, this class exposes students to essential components of emergency/disaster preparedness operations and activities on an organizational and systems level. Students are introduced to various preparedness operations for a variety of settings in anticipation of emergency/disaster events including pandemics (e.g. COVID-19), tornadoes, radiologic events and other disasters. Emphasis is placed on developing students’ leadership abilities and abilities to serve as a preparedness resource person for organizations and various systems within the community.
- COUN 5956 Telemental Health: As COVID-19 has brought the importance of telehealth services to the forefront, this full-summer, graduate-level course is designed for professional personnel to gain competency and develop skills providing telemental and telebehavioral health services to reach more clients, ethically expand scope of practice and provide culturally responsive mental health care in technologically-based service formats. The course targets current counseling, social work, or other mental/behavior health related fields or those who are graduate level practitioners in the field if interested. Students must be enrolled in an ETSU graduate program to take this course.
- EPID 3080 Principles of Epidemiology: This full-summer course introduces the principles of epidemiology, which is the method used to find the causes of health outcomes, diseases and pandemics (e.g. COVID-19) in populations. It will cover their application to the investigation, prevention and control of illness, injury and disease including infectious diseases, environmental exposures, injuries, natural disasters and non-infectious diseases.
In addition to these summer course offerings, ETSU Health students are currently enrolled in an elective course that was quickly developed to address the issues faced by health care teams in their responses in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new course is titled COVID-19 Preparedness, Prevention, and Management for an Interprofessional Team. It was developed by faculty from Quillen College of Medicine, Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy and the College of Public Health.
“Faculty addressed a need for a course that would identify and explore the needs of interprofessional health care teams during COVID, and in just four weeks’ time, they brought that idea to fruition and introduced an elective course that we will offer again to our students in June,” said Dr. Bill Block, vice president for clinical affairs and dean of Quillen College of Medicine.