Diversity & Recruitment

Emory & Henry College
Department of Physical Therapy

Diversity and Recruitment Strategies

Admission Statement

Meeting the needs of our region’s diverse patient population requires diversity among those health care providers who serve them. To meet these needs, the Admissions Committee will give additional consideration to those students who are from or who have worked with the following: medically underserved areas or populations either regionally from rural areas, such as middle Appalachia or other comparable urban or rural areas across the country, and/or educationally disadvantaged groups. Additional consideration will also be given to second career students and first-generation college students.

Admission criteria for the Physical Therapy Program will continue to emphasize academic excellence. However, in fulfilling the mission and vision of Emory & Henry College to serve the underserved, additional factors will also be considered and some preference will be given to applications from individuals who are underrepresented in the healthcare professions such as those that come from or serve in underserved areas, from nontraditional students and from students who represent the first in their families to pursue higher education.

Diversity Recruitment Plan/Strategies:

The E&H Physical Therapy Program will direct efforts towards recruiting the students that represent the patient populations our college and program mission proposes to serve in “our region and the larger world” with the “belief in the worth of each person’s religious and cultural heritage.” Marketing and recruiting efforts for our program by the School of Health Sciences Admissions Coordinator targets Pre-Health Advisors and students at colleges and universities, particularly in the rural areas of the Appalachian Region. Forty-two percent of the Appalachian Region’s population is rural, compared to 20 percent of the national population. The Appalachian Region includes parts of 12 states from southern New York to northern Mississippi. Emphasis has been placed in our physical therapy program on recruitment at academic institutions in the Appalachian Region in the following states:  West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Many of the students at these fairs come from the underserved areas in the Appalachian Region and are first-generation college students. These marketing efforts have included attendance at graduate school fairs, virtual PT program fairs, roundtable panel discussions, classroom visits and presentations, one-on-one meetings, and site visits or open houses of our campus facilities. As a follow-up to meeting with these students at these fairs, the Admissions Coordinator maintains contact individually with many of these students, offers advice and serves as an excellent resource through the process of making a decision as to which school a student plans to apply and ultimately attend. Attention is also directed to the Pre-Health advisors at these institutions to ensure these advisors are well versed in our mission, in the students we strive to attract to our program and to gain an overall understanding of what our program has to offer students and graduates, and ultimately the patients of the region that they may serve.