The Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures and the Department of Human Centered Design (HCD) offers a minor in Healthy Futures open to all undergraduate students. Most of today’s healthcare spending is on clinical approaches for diagnosing and treating diseases. However, behavioral, social and environmental factors play a large role in determining overall health. Health and wellness professionals of the future must engage in an interdisciplinary effort to successfully compete and contribute to positive change. This minor provides a high caliber, transdisciplinary education in the fields of health, hospitality, and design. This innovative trans-disciplinary focus — the first of its kind — has the potential to change industry practices and professional attitudes by breaking down the silos that often undermine creative solutions. This minor may be of particular interest to students enrolled in health, wellness, policy, and hospitality related majors, or students interested in applying their education to problem-solving in the population health and wellness space.

Eligibility

Open to all undergraduate students, including HCE majors.

Requirements

Earning the minor in Healthy Futures requires a minimum of 17 credits. The minor consists of students taking “DEA/HADM 3055 – Health, Hospitality & Design Industry Seminar” (1 credit-hour), 9-credit hours of specific required courses distributed across the three disciplines of design, healthcare administration, and hospitality, 6-credit hour of elective courses, and participating in an internship (1 credit-hour DEA 4020 Supervised Fieldwork). See the HCD website for detailed course requirements and a list of eligible electives. Courses must be completed as letter grade with a grade of B- or better.

Getting Started

Completing the Hospitality, Health, and Design Industry Seminar (DEA/HADM 3055) is required to declare Intent to minor in Healthy Futures. Submit the Intention to Minor in Healthy Futures form electronically; the form can also be found on the HCD website.  Students are responsible for planning their minor program of study in conjunction with the advisor in their major. Due to the imperative that students take core courses outside their discipline and the fact that students come from multiple departments, the requirements change across majors. Thus, careful planning by the student is warranted.

To enroll in the fieldwork seminar course students need to submit a Special Studies form. Use this form to request enrollment in a Directed Reading (4000), Empirical Research (4010), or Supervised Fieldwork (4020) course.

Intention to Minor in Healthy Futures

Application to Graduate with a Healthy Futures Minor

Internship Manual for the Healthy Futures Minor

Special Studies Enrollment Form

For more information, please see the minor homepage on the HCD website.