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Online BA in Liberal Studies: Health Foundations

Health Skills Essential for the Future

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  • Duration 3.5 Years
  • Cost per Credit $410
  • Credit Hours 120

Program Benefits

  • Study core science and health fundamentals
  • Gain the credential to pursue graduate study
  • Learn on your schedule in an online asynchronous classroom
  • One-on-one instruction from expert faculty in a program that accepts up to 90 transfer credits

Gain Competitive Skills for a Fast-Paced Industry

The online liberal studies bachelor’s degree in health foundations from The American Women’s College of Bay Path University (TAWC) will help you establish a foundational skill set for a variety of in-demand health careers. The program dives deep into anatomy and physiology essentials and allows you to customize your learning experience with a selection of social science, behavior, and health elective courses.

Build an Academic Foundation with Support from Health Experts

3.5 Years

120 Total Credits

The online BA in Liberal Studies: Health Foundations degree requires the completion of 120 total credits, including TAWC’s undergraduate liberal studies courses and the program’s major courses. Additionally, you may tailor your studies to support your professional goals through a selection of elective courses.

To view the complete list of program courses, visit the curriculum for all liberal studies programs.

Required Health Foundations Major Courses

This course will examine basic concepts of cellular biology, developmental biology, genetic variation and heredity, and evolution. Laboratory sessions will involve mitosis, embryology, heredity and recombinant DNA technology, and biochemical evolution.
This course is an introductory course to the concepts, strategies and trends related to understanding personal and community health issues. Health issues will be considered from both individual and societal perspectives. Topics include fitness, nutrition, mental health, stress management, drug usage, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Theories/models for changing unhealthy behaviors will be explored. Emphasis is placed upon empowering the individual /or community members to make personal decisions in developing healthy behaviors that promote a healthy lifestyle, enhance overall well-being, and result in a better quality of life across the lifespan.

In this course, students will be provided a baseline of knowledge of the fundamentals of computers and digital literacies to ensure they will be able to understand a constantly changing technology oriented landscape. In this course, students will be exposed to the fundamentals of computing technology, including computer hardware and software concepts; the Windows operating system and commands; drives, folders, and files; Google’s suite of applications; use of the Internet and growing connectivity with everyday devices; and digital literacy knowledge and skills. By mastering the fundamentals of computing technology and demonstrating digital literacy, students will have the skills needed to thrive in the 21st century workforce.

Philosophy is a disciplined search for knowledge. It investigates what is real and true. Ethics is a branch of philosophy which asks “What ought we do?” It rigorously challenges us to think critically, assess knowledge, and form criteria for making personal decisions as well as decisions which shape community and national standards of action. Ethics is the applied branch of philosophy. It’s not just theory. It affects real decisions, real people, in the real world. In this course we will investigate the field of ethics from a multicultural and international perspective. We’ll start with basic ethical theories and proceed to use these theories to learn about and evaluate some of the major ethical issues in the world on topics such as poverty, justice, war, rights, discrimination, etc.

Prerequisite: ENG 124

Using an active learning approach, students will explore psychological perspectives and methods as explanations for human behavior and mental processes. Other topics include: neurophysiology, consciousness, learning, personality theories, and psychological disorders.

This required interdisciplinary course is designed to give all undergraduate students entering Bay Path University a common experience and foundation for lifelong learning. Students examine leadership within the larger context of our interdependent world and their own strengths, values, and aspirations. Students also examine learning styles, communication skills and technology to create a personalized action plan for success. This course lays the foundation for higher-level courses in the WELL program.

Together, we will spend the course defining and refining our response to the question: what is a meaningful career and what resources do I need to achieve one? We will also build upon the learning we achieved in WEL 220 by thinking about how career management skills can help us become more effective leaders. This course has been designed to support adult learners in all phases of their professional and life paths, from meaningful career planning through the job search and beyond. You will find that many assignments can be tailored to your own personal situation, whether you are just embarking on your career, changing course, or preparing for retirement.

This interdisciplinary capstone course is designed to give senior-level students an opportunity to demonstrate their leadership, communications and technology skills through active engagement in a self-directed change project. Building on assignments completed in previous courses, students are responsible for designing, implementing and evaluating an experiential learning project that draws on their talents, interests, strengths and skills to facilitate change in a personal, family, organizational and/or community setting.

Required Major Courses

This course provides an overview of tissue types and their identification and function, as well as the integument, skeletal and muscular human body systems.

This course provides an overview of tissue types and their identification and function, as well as the integument, skeletal and muscular human body systems. Please note that lab supplies required by this online course take time to order and ship. If you choose to enroll in this course, it is your responsibility to make sure that you follow up on lab related communications as needed in order to secure your lab supplies in a timely fashion. Adding this course to your schedule after the start of class may result in obtaining your lab supplies late.

Lab fee: $175, Corequisite: BSC150

This course involves a study of the structural anatomy and physiological functioning of the respiratory, circulatory, endocrine, nervous, and urinary systems.

Laboratory topics include the dissection of neurological organs to study gross and histological structure as well as the evaluation of selected physiological, clinical, and diagnostic tests. Please note that lab supplies required by this online course take time to order and ship. If you choose to enroll in this course, it is your responsibility to make sure that you follow up on lab related communications as needed in order to secure your lab supplies in a timely fashion. Adding this course to your schedule after the start of class may result in obtaining your lab supplies late.

Lab fee: $150, Corequisite: BSC151

The General Chemistry 1 course is focused on the basic principles of chemistry with an emphasis on inorganic chemistry. Topics include: atomic structure, concentrations and molarity, chemical reactions, and energy states. It is the first in a two-part series of courses.

Prerequisite: MAT 112

The General Chemistry 1 Lab course will support learning of the basic principles of inorganic chemistry through hands on and simulated (virtual) lab experiments. Lab activities include: atomic structure, concentrations and molarity, chemical reactions, etc. This course is taken concurrently with CHM 150. Please note that lab supplies required by this online course take time to order and ship. If you choose to enroll in this course, it is your responsibility to make sure that you follow up on lab related communications as needed in order to secure your lab supplies in a timely fashion. Adding this course to your schedule after the start of class may result in obtaining your lab supplies late.

Lab fee: $160, Corequisite: CHM 150

This course will take an in-depth look at political, cultural, and social trends within the United States from the end of World War II to the present. It will begin with America’s post-war patterns of consumer economics, Cold War politics and mass culture expressiveness, and trace transformations to the present. Class meetings will mix lecture, discussion, and multimedia formats.

Prerequisite: Junior or senior status

This course examines trajectories of scientific thought from a humanistic and ethical perspective. Students will question the “myth of objectivity” in science and analyze how scientific developments have centered privileged perspectives as the human default. Additionally, students will focus on the ways in which scientific movements are impacted by the historical moments in which they are embedded, hold a mutually constitutive relationship with sociopolitical and cultural issues, have been used as tools to legitimize systems of oppression, and are built from frameworks that extrapolate privileged experience and modes of inquiry as the “objective norm” of scientific validity. Topics on the exclusionary and biased design of scientific developments will be explored, along with ethical issues of bias in contemporary scientific fields.

Prerequisite: HUM 210

This course is designed for diverse students to acquire a solid foundation in non-calculus mathematics. It uses practical mathematics to develop problem solving and analytical skills. Topics include linear equations, linear inequalities, matrix and its application, linear programming, and the simplex method.

Prerequisite: MAT 104 or appropriate placement test score

This course focuses on human growth and development over the lifespan. Theories related to physical, cognitive, social and personality across the lifespan will be explored. Life-changing health conditions and treatments are discussed with regard to potential psychological and social impact that these conditions and treatments may have on children, adolescents, adults, and health-care givers within the community.

Prerequisite: PSY101

What You’ll Learn

Whether you’re interested in advancing your current health career or pursuing a new career path in the field, the online Health Foundations degree will provide you with foundational knowledge that can be built upon for years to come. As a student of this program, you’ll learn general chemistry, physiology, and anatomy essentials, plus social behavior and science skills that can immediately be applied in the health workplace.

By Graduation, You’ll Have Skills to:

Expertise for the Health Career You Want

The health field is expanding fast, with industry growth of 13% expected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics by 2031.1 At this rate, the industry will create more than two million new jobs for health experts throughout the decade.1 Pursue a degree in health foundations now to maximize your professional potential for this in-demand field.

Explore Careers

Learn from Industry Experts

At The American Women’s College, your learning is expanded by the rich workplace experience our faculty bring to the classroom. Faculty are professionals who hold an array of titles in the fields they teach. Their involvement in the day-to-day challenges of their role and industry brings curriculums to life with real-world examples as you connect what you learn to what they share.

Faculty Spotlight

Each faculty member at TAWC incorporates real industry experience into each lesson. As a student, you’ll receive personalized, one-on-one support and graduate fully prepared to face the challenges of your chosen field.

Sara Milillo, PhD, Assistant Dean, Curriculum Development & Instruction; Director, Science Programs, The American Women’s College

Sara completed her bachelor’s degree from Penn State University in Biotechnology with a minor in Microbiology. During this time, her love of science, especially applied science, was ignited. She studied Genetically Modified cacao (chocolate) trees which were designed to be more resistant to a common infection that kills the trees, hurts the farmers’ business, and reduces the availability of chocolate. Sara loved how her research had a direct impact and helped not only the cacao farmers but also the public in terms of their access to chocolate!

Next, Sara went to graduate school at Cornell University and earned her Ph.D. in Food Microbiology with an emphasis in Food Safety and Education. Her doctoral research was focused on how the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes attaches to plants and animals and its gene expression patterns. This work further cemented her love of applied research and public health.

She was next awarded a USDA post-doctoral research fellowship to study another foodborne pathogen, Salmonella, this time in poultry. For this project, she moved to Arkansas, one of the U.S.’s leading poultry-producing states. Though she loved conducting research and truly enjoyed learning about the poultry industry, she also loved teaching! So while Sara was working as a research scientist at the University of Arkansas, she started teaching night classes at a local community college.

Fast forward, she was most recently a faculty member at Penn State for several years before joining the team at Bay Path and The American Women’s College. She loves her current job promoting math and science education for women and increasing access by developing online courses and degrees!

Choose Your Major

Customize your BA in Liberal Studies degree by choosing from a variety of career-focused majors designed to help you achieve your professional goals. A general degree pathway is also available.

BA in Liberal Studies: Digital Information Design and Society

Study analysis, communication, ethical reasoning, and humanities issues through digital technologies.

BA in Liberal Studies: Early Childhood Education Licensure

Prepare to become a licensed teacher in the state of Massachusetts and make a difference in the lives of young students.

BA in Liberal Studies: Early Childhood Leadership

Understand the needs of young children through courses that examine supportive teaching strategies, early childhood development, and disabilities.

BA in Liberal Studies: Education Studies, Non-Licensure

Customize your learning experience to prepare for education career opportunities outside of the classroom.

BA in Liberal Studies: Elementary Education Licensure

Prepare for elementary teaching positions as an educator licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Frequently Asked Questions

Explore our frequently asked questions for in-depth answers. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, reach out to us.

Choosing a major for your degree allows you to gain career-ready skills in a specific area of expertise. These specialty skills will allow you to stand out among other professionals in your field and better compete for the position you want.

You’ll complete 120 total credits to earn the online BA in Liberal Studies: Health Foundations major. You can review courses now.

No, a major is not required for the online BA in Liberal Studies program. You may choose the standard Liberal Studies degree or one of six major options, which include:

  1. Digital Information Design & Society
  2. Early Childhood Education Licensure
  3. Early Childhood Leadership
  4. Education Studies, Non-Licensure
  5. Elementary Education Licensure
  6. Health Foundations

You can learn more about coursework for this program on our courses page.

The requirements for the online BA in Liberal Studies program include:

  • Submit your application.
  • Submit official high school transcripts and college transcripts if applicable.
  • Have a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0.

You can learn more about our admission requirements on our admission page.

No. All of the Liberal Studies major core courses are specific to your chosen concentration. You may only move from your chosen concentration to the general Liberal Studies program without losing credits.

Those who hold an online BA in Liberal Studies: Health Foundations degree often pursue careers such as medical records specialist and health education specialist. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the highest-paid professionals in these positions can earn up to $70,720 annually. Learn more about your career options by visiting our careers page.

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Source

  1. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook. “Healthcare Occupations.” Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/.