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Department of Health and Human Performance

What We Do:

The Health and Human Performance Department prepares students to become leaders, practitioners, and advocates dedicated to improving individual, organizational, and community health and well-being.  

Our programs blend theory, research, and real-world applications to prepare graduates who can lead, innovate, and create positive outcomes in healthcare, human resources, public health, and human performance settings. Guided by the University's Jesuit tradition, we encourage reflection, ethical decision-making, collaboration, and service to others.  

How We Stand Out:

Students benefit from an engaging, hands-on educational experience that combines academic rigor with real-world applications. Distinctive features of our department include: 

  • Community-engaged and community-based learning projects
  • Opportunities for student research and scholarly presentations
  • State-of-the-art learning and laboratory facilities, with lab experiences integrated into coursework
  • Professional organization membership and conference participation
  • Study abroad opportunities and global academic partnerships 

Programs:

The department offers undergraduate and graduate programs that prepare students for careers across healthcare, human services, human resources, public health, kinesiology and human performance fields. 

Undergraduate Programs 

  • - Prepares managers to plan, organize, direct, control or coordinate medicine and health services. Job opportunities available in hospitals, clinics, nursing care facilities, physicians’ offices, insurance industries and free-standing health care facilities. 
  • - This is an interdisciplinary program that integrates knowledge from the human resources field, social and behavioral sciences, business and the liberal arts. 
  • - Dedicated to the scientific inquiry of physical activity and exercise as they affect human performance across a spectrum of settings and populations. 
  • - Integrates knowledge from epidemiology, biostatistics, behavior change, program planning and implementation as well as communication strategies and advocacy efforts to improve the public health of individuals, communities, states and the nation. 
  • - Based on the American Sport Education Program (ASEP) the coaching concentration helps meet the needs of those who wish to coach and work more effectively with young athletes from youth through interscholastic sports. 
  • - Prepares students for job opportunities in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, adult day care and work with chronically ill populations. 
  • - Designed for students from different fields of study and professional practice to extend profession-specific perspectives to create transdisciplinary, integrative strategies to innovatively address health issues and health inequities in the community.   
  • – Designed for students to explore exercise/kinesiology physiology and applied anatomy/kinesiology along with elective KNES and cognate elective courses.  
  • - Designed to increase the knowledge base of the depth and implications of nutritional problems and their effects on chronic illnesses. 
  • - Explores the core areas of public health, preparing students to examine a variety of issues from a population health perspective. 

Graduate Programs

  • - Provides students with a comprehensive, practical and interdisciplinary set of core competencies, knowledge, skills and values for health administration jobs in a variety of organizations. 
  • – Offers a curriculum developed with the core HR body of knowledge. Integrates the most up-to-date research and best practices to illustrate how HR professionals achieve organizational goals.

Meet Our Faculty:

Our faculty members are dedicated educators, mentors, scholars, and practitioners who bring a wealth of professional expertise to the classroom. Faculty actively engage students through research, advising, networking, coaching, service-learning projects, and experiential education. Many have held leadership positions in healthcare settings, human resources departments, and professional practice settings, enabling them to connect classroom learning with contemporary industry needs.  

View the Health & Human Performance Faculty Directory

Inside the Classroom:

Experiential learning is a hallmark of the department. Students participate in: 

  • Laboratory-based coursework 
  • Professional internships and fieldwork placements 
  • Conference presentations and scholarly activities 
  • Research projects with faculty mentors 
  • Community outreach and service-learning experiences 
  • Study abroad opportunities 

Our facilities and partnerships provide students with opportunities to apply classroom knowledge to real-world challenges while developing the critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving skills sought by employers and graduate programs. 

Career Outcomes:

Our graduates pursue rewarding careers across a broad range of sectors, including: 

  • Hospitals and healthcare systems 
  • Public health organizations 
  • Human resources and talent management 
  • Rehabilitation and wellness programs 
  • Community health agencies 
  • Athletic teams 
  • Healthcare consulting firms 
  • Government agencies 
  • Insurance and managed-care organizations 
  • Corporate wellness and performance programs 
  • Nonprofit and advocacy organizations  

Graduate School 

About 85 percent of our kinesiology graduates continue their studies. The largest percentage continues into the DPT (Doctor of Physical Therapy) program at Scranton. 

Graduates from other programs continue their education in advanced graduate and professional programs, including healthcare administration, physical therapy, occupational therapy, medicine, physician assistant studies, law, public health, nutrition, and related disciplines.  

Accreditation:

Logo of the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs - a blue square with the letters CAA on top and HEP on bottom. 

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