Characteristics of Physiology and Physiology-Related Pre-Health Degree Programs in the Physiology Majors Interest Group

Abstract

Abstract The Physiology Majors Interest Group (P-MIG), a grassroots organization of educators, has collected data on the history and characteristics of Physiology and highly related undergraduate programs (ex: Human Biology, Pre-Medicine, Biomedical Sciences, etc.) that serve a common population of prehealth students. Data was obtained as part of an online survey sent out to P-MIG conference attendees at the 2017-2019 annual meetings (n=30). Participating institutions indicate that 25.9% have degrees called Physiology aligned with 28% being housed in a department of physiology, 75.9% are a Bachelor of Science program, 34.9% are affiliated with a College of Arts and Sciences, and 80% have a human/integrative physiology emphasis. Further, 47.6% of programs are greater than 10 years old and 100% have seen either no change or an increase in enrollment over the past 5 years. Most programs have a dedicated advising staff (68.2%) and formalized learning objectives for the major (61.9%). 34.1% have a curriculum committee who oversees the major. Program sizes vary widely from less than 50 to over 2000 students. While there is diversity in departmental organization and management structure in the programs, a commonality is that all programs are preparing students with aspirations in careers in healthcare. We report the similarities and differences between these programs to allow for advisors to better understand the broad landscape of pre-health programs at the undergraduate level.