University of Maryland Graduate School

This course introduces students to social and health entrepreneurship through case studies, key readings, and primary information resources. Students will become familiar with the social determinants of health, systems of public health, the science of team-based innovation, basic business fundamentals, and the essentials of social and health improvement through the lens of entrepreneurship. Students will begin to develop skills demonstrated by successful social entrepreneurs, including team building and leadership, negotiation, and working in complex social and cultural environments. They will explore the sources of funding for social enterprises, including philanthropy, governmental funding, and income generating, self-sustaining social enterprises. Students will also begin to plan their course of study in their selected concentration and consider an initial proposal for a Master’s project.

This course provides an overview of the entrepreneurial process, while examining entrepreneurship from a range of several scholarly contexts, including the social, health and behavioral sciences. The course introduces the student to the language of entrepreneurship and covers the initial stages of idea formation and initial development of entrepreneurial opportunities. Emphasis is given in this course to developing theoretical frameworks for enhancing entrepreneurial success. Students will learn to engage with their ideas in early-stage market and rapid prototyping. Students will engage in both qualitative and quantitative approaches to understanding innovation. Students will learn the tools, methods, and self-reflection techniques necessary to bring new ideas to reality while also providing them with ways to learn about how to test the viability of and response to their ideas in the market. Learning through iteration is a key component of this course as it is expected that the first version of any idea is not likely the last. Human-centered design methodologies will be front-and-center in this course from the perspective of how to innovate based not on the ideas of the innovator but based first on the needs of the customer. This course will provide practical, real world knowledge about the lean approach, human centered design, how to design a minimum viable product, when to pivot, and other aspects of entrepreneurial strategy. At the end of the course students will be able to develop a strategy to launch their ideas.

Impact labs are co-curricular offerings bundled for academic credit. These programs are designed around themes of innovation and entrepreneurship including concepts such as customer discovery, design-thinking, intellectual property, business model generation, the art of the pitch, social policy, determinants of public health, and regulatory issues. Students will select topics that align with their capstone project. Impact Labs will help students deeply examine their topics through the lens and context of entrepreneurship and design thinking. 1 academic credit is the equivalent of 15 hours of participation in Impact Labs during the course of the semester. Students will take 3 credits of Impact Lab through the course of their program. 

Project management has been proven to be the most effective method of delivering products within cost, schedule, and resource constraints. This course teaches students the skills to ensure their projects are completed on time and on budget while giving the user the product they expect. Students will gain a strong working knowledge of the basics of project management and be able to immediately use that knowledge to effectively manage work projects. At the end of the series you will be able to identify and manage the product scope, build a work breakdown structure, create a project plan, create the project budget, define and allocate resources, manage the project development, identify and manage risks, and understand the project procurement process.

This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the essential elements of successful business strategy and financing. Students will create a business canvas and will gain an understanding of basic principles in accounting, financing models, equity financing, and investing. In addition, students will be exposed to different types of funding including crowdfunding, angel investors, grants, and venture capital. At the end of the course, students will be able to develop a sustainable business and financing model to advance their health or social innovation concepts. Emphasis will be placed on principles of growth strategies and scaling growth opportunities.

Students will learn how to conduct a market analysis and apply the marketing mix as it relates to health and social enterprises. Students will employ techniques to market their ideas effectively using best practices in digital marketing, SEO, social media, and public relations. Emphasis will be placed on customer discovery, determining segments and positioning, the importance of branding, consumer behavior, and strategic marketing management. By the end of the course students will be able to develop a marketing plan for their health and social venture and examining marketing needs in the context of their goals and business strategy.

This course is designed to help students gain insights into economic and social value creation. Specifically, the purpose of this course is to provide students with hands-on exposure to the entrepreneurial pursuit of social and health impact and innovation. Students will learn to recognize and critically assess various forms of social and health enterprise strategies as tools of economic development and social transformation.  Students will gain a greater understanding of the challenges of growing and sustaining a social or health enterprise. Students can expect to improve their consulting skills, including project planning, issue analysis, formulation of strategic and tactical recommendations, and client relationship management. By participating in this course, students will be better able to adapt and apply business skills and academic disciplines in the social and health sectors, and will have increased skills for effective and thoughtful leadership in business and society.

This course will draw together the experiential, curricular, and individual components of the Master’s degree. The Capstone project serves as a vehicle to integrate what students learn in their graduate coursework, impact lab participation, community engagement field work, and study abroad (if applicable). It does this by providing an opportunity for students to demonstrate their ability to apply what they have learned in the program in a situation that approximates aspects of the post-graduate professional activities in which they intend to engage. It is a bridge between full-time graduate study and fulltime involvement in the world of social and health innovation and entrepreneurship. By the end of the capstone, students must demonstrate their ability to develop and execute a work plan that leads to a social or health innovation; iterate a project sufficiently to have produced a resume-worthy accomplishment; build strong professional relationships with and draw upon the resources of faculty, community practitioners and entrepreneurs, student colleagues, and external advisors. Students’ capstone projects should be creative, have the potential to create positive change, be innovative, and reflect students’ personal and professional identity. Capstone projects may be solo efforts or team endeavors, depending on the nature of the proposal. All students engaged in a capstone will meet periodically to both learn techniques that cut across the range of projects undertaken that semester, and to advise, coach, and support each other. Each student or team will conclude the project by presenting it to an audience of students, faculty, community-based entrepreneurs and partners. Because each student’s interests are different, their capstone projects may take different forms. They may create a new organization, build a prototype, or apply a social or health enterprise technique to an existing organization. Some students will work in the U.S., some abroad. The common thread is that these are all hands-on efforts intended to result in doing something, in taking an action that leads to some form of societal betterment.

Global health as a field of study has emerged as a priority in the last 30 years. The global health field highlights the international dimension of global processes and current health issues, emphasizing a holistic understanding of each socio-cultural and environmental context. In addition, global health captures the need to work in collaboration, emphasizing a multisectoral and transdisciplinary approach to manage the transcultural and sometimes trans-bordering dimensions of worldwide health inequities. This introductory Global Health course provides students with a broad understanding of health and the social, political, cultural, behavioral, and economic forces that influence health access and health outcomes. 

This course applies the concepts, theories, and principles of the field of global health presented in the first course to the practical challenges facing global health professionals. Each student will select a specific global health priority for a given national or geo politically defined population to examine over the Durant of the course. The students selected case will be her primary focus for applying needs assessment methodologies, including epidemiological methods, mapping local, national and global policy processes, identifying strategies for building infrastructure and workforce capacity, analyzing financial opportunities and limitations and assessing the impact of macro changes in global economy, political environment and human rights and legal systems. Each student will complete a final summary project report that will summarize findings regarding scope, option, outcomes and a recommended action plan for improving the health status of the population group they have studied.

A comprehensive multidisciplinary examination of the complex issues related to women and children’s health across the globe, based on the World Health Organization’s 2007 Framework for Action for strengthening health systems and the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Topics include biological and medical issues, reproductive health, violence against women and children and its impact on health, infectious and chronic disease, and the relationship of environmental and social issues to health. Analysis also covers current national, regional, and global trends; program and policy responses to these trends; and prospects for the future.

This course increases knowledge of how to apply different theories and intervention strategies to the health assessment and response to mass violence and disaster. Crisis theory used to guide crisis use a system approach to health services management including strategic planning budgeting and resources allocation.

This course will provide a rigorous analysis of scientific writing on the sentence and paragraph level. Students will master the elements of concision and coherence as they learn and employ various strategies for packaging information.

This course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of the process of writing for scholarly journals. Students will read and analyze articles from a variety of journals, focusing on both form and content of research articles, case studies, meta-analyses, theoretical articles, and book reviews.

This course will prepare students to communicate to lay audiences. Students will analyze the writing in various documents such press releases, magazines articles, websites, and popular science books.

This course will explore the elements of successful grants and proposals. Students will be required to produce a grant or proposal relating to their capstone project.

Students will examine the fundamental concepts of integrative health and wellness (IHW), including the history, philosophies, and methods of prominent integrative therapies. Perceived differences between and limitations of traditional “allopathic” medicine and IHW “nontraditional” medicine will be identified. Patients’ motivations and patterns of use of IHW approaches will be explored. Components of the five major areas within IHW as identified by the National Institutes of Health will be introduced. These include alternative medical systems, body-based systems (massage, chiropractic, rolfing), mind-body medicine, biological approaches (herbal medicine, nutritional approaches, pharmacological therapies, Ayurveda), and bioelectromagnetics (energy healing). The state of basic scientific knowledge and data from controlled trials relating to the safety, efficacy, and mechanisms of action of integrative therapies are presented. In the second half of the course, an overview of the scientific evidence for the integrative biological and body-based approaches will be provided. Theories for how these approaches function to affect health are examined, such as psychoneuroimmunology, the role of inflammation, and the gut microbiome. Key practice, legal, and ethical issues facing CAM researchers and practitioners are reviewed.

This course will provide students an interprofessional overview of the clinical application of integrative health and wellness approaches. Students will learn the skills necessary for developing an effective therapeutic practitioner-patient relationship and strategies for communicating and educating patients about integrative health and wellness approaches, potential benefits, and possible risks. The factors affecting the utilization, interpretation, and patient understanding of these therapies will be examined. Clinical decision-making and the influence of research on recommendations and evaluation will be examined. Students will learn how the integrative assessment differs from the conventional assessment process and how to develop an integrative treatment plan. Numerous case studies demonstrating the application of integrative approaches for the treatment and prevention of common and chronic diseases will be analyzed. Finally, the challenges in developing research to adequately examine the integrative approach as it is applied in clinical practice will be discussed. *Prerequisite MHS 612

Students will learn the fundamentals of health coaching, which is guiding and enabling patients/clients to make and sustain choices to achieve and maintain health. Students will review frameworks and techniques of health coaching from a holistic perspective including assessment, identification of goals and barriers, development of action plans, implementation strategies, and monitoring progress. Students will be introduced to health behavior change theories and models, as well as interventions from integrative health and wellness. Also explored are personal, social, lifestyle, and medical resources to encourage comprehensive wellness. Students will work to develop strategies appropriate to their patient/client population through research, class discussions, mentored coaching activities, and independent assignments. Students will also complete a behavioral change project with a partner, allowing them to experience the roles of both a health and wellness coach and a client.

Students will learn about the connections between the mind, body, spirit, and energy in relation to health and disease. In this course, students will learn about the connections between the mind, body, spirit, and energy in relation to health and disease. An overview of the scientific evidence for integrative interventions for health promotion and treatment is provided. Students will learn advanced skills in approaches that promote or rely on the connection between the mind and body. These include meditation, mindfulness, guided imagery, autogenics, hypnosis, spirituality, movement-based, journaling, acupuncture and energy therapies, and art therapies. Students will participate in experiential learning by practicing integrative approaches and interacting with an integrative health provider to increase their self-awareness of the interconnections between emotional, physical, mental, social, and spiritual aspects of health.

This course provides participants with the information and skills needed to address ethical and legal concerns related to palliative and end-of-life care.  Participants will learn the theoretical foundations of health care ethics, including the Hippocratic Oath, ethical principles, virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, and care-based ethics. The relationship between law and ethics will be clarified.  The focus of society and medicine in delaying death and addressing human suffering will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on developing a knowledge base of key concepts and strategies that can be used to prevent and resolve problems that are specific to palliative and end-of-life care, including advance directives, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, suffering, withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments, organ donation, and assisted suicide.

In this course on end-of-life care, participants will learn practical skills to assist people who are facing incurable illnesses, such as cancer, severe cardiovascular disease, and progressive neurodegenerative diseases.  Palliative care focuses on symptom control and amelioration of suffering, which are often underemphasized in conventional healthcare training. Topics will include pain and symptom management strategies, both conventional and complementary, determination of terminal prognosis, hospice care, palliative care emergencies, and discussion of advance directives. Participants will enjoy creative and thoughtful reflection activities that allow them to deeply engage in the topics covered in this course.

Participants will learn the prominent theories of grieving and the grief reaction, as well as the empirically-based therapeutic interventions available to support and care for the bereaved.  Participants will learn to distinguish between anticipatory grief, normal grief, and complicated grief and to identify factors that affect the grieving process. This course also explores reflective practice and self-care for the end-of-life care professional while learning to support those who are dying and those who are grieving.

This course explores the psychological and social aspects of adult development within the context of the ongoing process of aging. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to describe the major psychological and sociological theories of aging and adult development; understand the physical, psychological, social, and health changes that occur during aging; evaluate the biological, psychological, intellectual, and social dimensions along which developmental changes occur in adult aging and their implications for the aging individual, family, and society; understand the importance of an individual’s cultural context while progressing through the life course; and identify current research trends and theories regarding several aspects of the aging process (e.g. death and dying, mental health, positive affect, personality, chronic disease, and social roles).

Explores electronic publication environments as fluid spaces where interactions among people, machines and media (words, images, sounds, video, animations, simulations) must be structured for the unforeseen. The course focuses on planning, analyzing, prototyping and integrating interaction design with interface design. 

Teaches students to gather requirements data, model information structures and develop a variety of documents to communicate the information architecture to other participants, including technical experts, usability experts, clients and users. Students learn to determine a target audience, develop personas or user profiles, refine and validate requirements and create site maps and other “specs” and wire frames. 

Introduces concepts, theories and methods that support the study of human-computer interaction and user-centered system design. Major approaches to machine-mediated learning and understanding are surveyed, with an emphasis on problem-solving, knowledge representation, structure of knowledge systems and problems of interface design. Prepares students to understand and analyze research based on empirical study of human behavior and on models of learning and understanding.

Introduces the chief methods for studying users’ interactions with software and information resources. Encompasses both quantitative and qualitative methods, including analysis of logs, indirect observation, traditional usability studies and ethnographic techniques.

Designed to introduce the process of how drugs, devices, and diagnostics are developed, providing students with the experience and skills necessary to facilitate the translation of new biological knowledge into tools to improve human health. A 3-credit course, once a week for 2 hours consisting of a 1-hour lecture by a faculty member, followed by a discussion of an assigned paper. Each student will prepare a 30-minute presentation of a translational study with a faculty mentor.

This course introduces the concept of intellectual property in advancing technological innovation and promoting economic development. Students will learn how to safeguard intellectual property and facilitate technology transfer including the legal, licensing, and disclosure. The course will also explore the requirements for issue of a patent including preparation of a patent application. The course explores how research or an invention may be commercialized in the process of technology transfer. Emphasis is placed on the patenting and transfer of technologies pertinent to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device industries

Learn the skills to translate management problems into market research problems. Gain the ability to analyze problems systematically. Develop critical eyes for market research and understand its contributions and limitations. Gain a working "hands-on" experience with the full process of market research and customer discovery.

Using research case studies and other real life examples, students will gain the tools necessary to develop biomedical start-ups. Topics include creativity, value creation, customer discovery, stage gate processes, intellectual property, strategic communications, entrepreneurship, and market research. This course will be taught in an accelerated format on the weekends.

Students in this course are required to identify commercialization opportunities and take a product concept through the commercialization process. Students will be able to conceptualize, strategize, design, plan, and pitch an idea that they’ve developed. This allows for a unique individual training experience for students to understand the application of their research and shape their research questions as they progress through their careers. INNO 542 is a pre-requisite. This course will be taught in an accelerated format on the weekends.