School of Public Health’s new experiential education lead brings students and employers together

Erin Pollock, experiential education director for the School of Public Health.

A graduate school practicum placement literally changed the course of Erin Pollock’s career.

Already trained as an athletic therapist, Pollock had her sights set on becoming a manager in a multidisciplinary health clinic.

Instead, as part of her Master of Public Health degree at the University of Alberta, she did a 400-hour internship at the Canadian Patient Safety Institute — and ended up working there for nearly nine years. 

That experience fostered a deep understanding of how hands-on learning opportunities prepare students for the real world of work, connecting them with public health professionals, practice-based mentors and partner organizations. 

It just made sense when Pollock was asked to join U of A as a practice co-ordinator 14 years ago. She is now stepping into the new role of director of experiential education for the School of Public Health. 

Having built partnerships with more than 350 health, community and government organizations over the years, Pollock says experiential education allows every student to build skills they can use as soon as they get into the workplace. 

“I see my role not only as facilitating learning, but also as cultivating reflective and reflexive practitioners who can navigate uncertainty with purpose,” she says.

We asked Erin Pollock to tell us more about her new role and how students can benefit.

How would you describe your new role as director of experiential education?

I oversee experiential education for SPH graduate students in six programs. My role is to look at all the ways to provide students with “learning by doing” opportunities whether they are part of a course or not. 

For the Master of Public Health program, in four of the nine courses all students have to take, there is a requirement that they work with an organization outside of the university, and they have to do some sort of reflective activity after that experience. 

Our program is unique in Canada because of those four touchpoints with external organizations. And our other required courses all include experiential pedagogy as well, because we use a problem-based learning approach that involves scenarios, case studies and simulations. 

What about for students who don’t have a practicum as part of their coursework?

Students who are in thesis-based programs like the Master of Arts in Community Engagement, MSc or PhD programs don’t have practicums or internships, but we are hoping to fill that gap. 

It might be by doing a micro-project. So they could go into a database and pull up a 20-hour-a-week project they could work on over two or three months for a particular organization, much like Community Service-Learning in the Faculty of Arts. 

We also have opportunities through the Community-University Partnership, a research centre that’s housed within the School of Public Health. They bring in a lot of community partners and small not-for-profit organizations that need capacity support, so we can connect them with students. 

If organizations can pay students, that’s amazing, but most don’t. That said, it’s always an excellent networking opportunity for the students. And it gives the organizations an opportunity to do work they might not already have capacity to do.

How do you decide which students go to which employers?

This is where I get really excited, because I get to play matchmaker. I meet students, find out what they’re interested in, find out what their hopes and dreams are, and then partner them with an organization where they can gain some of those skills and create those connections. 

Honestly how these experiences work best, because the organizations know they are getting a student who has been vetted and it’s going to be a really good fit, and students know they’re going to an organization that’s going to support them in their future career.

Then once they get there, building the relationship is just as important as which organization they’re placed with. 

Tell us about some of the 350 partnerships you have built.

I’ve got a database of employers that goes back to 2002. They fall into several categories, including provincial and federal government departments like Cancer Care Alberta, Primary and Preventative Health Services, Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration and the Public Health Agency of Canada. We also partner with non-governmental organizations and industry groups ranging from Alberta Capital Airshed to the Broken Arrow Traditional Healing Society and the Canadian Red Cross.

Why do the employers say they want to host a student?

The main thing I hear from preceptors (who supervise students) is that School of Public Health students have the ability to look at problem-solving in a complex solution, meaning they understand and inherently function in complexity versus seeing things as just complicated with no rhyme or reason.

They want to engage with our students because we challenge students, so they are able to take a problem and spearhead the solution, instead of just looking at the client and saying, “What do you want us to do?” 

We had a team of students do a project for Alberta Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration, looking at future challenges for employers of the future. Things like climate and changes in immigration policy, for example. Those students have been invited to present to the assistant deputy minister because they did a great job. They were given a piece of work that was meaningful to the organization.

Same when the College of Registered Nurses of Alberta had to split into two organizations. They needed a governance review so they brought in a team of students to develop part of the new Council processes and policies. Those were presented and the board accepted them without revision. 

Our students can take a project and run with it without handholding. 

We know we’ve succeeded with this work when we arrive at those full circle moments when students become preceptors (supervising students at their workplaces). That will tell us that the experience made a sustained impact and they now understand why a partner organization looks to students for fresh eyes and knowledge. And the value of training the next generation to take over in a good way. 

Tell us more about how experiential education changed your own career trajectory.

I was a member of the first  Master of Public Health class admitted to the newly established School of Public Health in 2006. All of us ended up getting jobs out of our practicums. 

I had taken a bachelor of exercise sport science from the University of Manitoba, worked as an athletic therapist for a couple of years and then enrolled for a master of public health in health policy and management at the U of A. I was so sure I wanted to be the CEO of a multidisciplinary clinic. Then my academic adviser, Dr. Dev Menon, told me about the opportunity at the Canadian Patient Safety Institute. At that point I had no idea what patient safety was. I honestly thought it was putting helmets and seatbelts on patients in gurneys as they were going down the hall in the hospital. 

I learned that it’s about so much more. Even during my practicum, I got to work with Patients for Patient Safety Canada, a World Health-Organization-affiliated group of people who had been affected by patient safety incidents. Most commonly it was parents whose children had died or who had been injured because of something that went wrong in health care. I learned how patient voices are included in different provinces.

The real lesson was that community-centred care matters, because something that’s going to work for one community is not always going to work for another.

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