Health at Hampshire College

Health and Premedical Studies
The School of Natural Science engages students in scientific process rather than mere observation. Each science course offers students the opportunity to work closely with professors in small, inquiry-based classes, conduct original research, develop individual projects, and utilize Hampshire’s unique open labs and exceptional equipment.

As in graduate school, students build a foundation of technical and analytical skills that they apply to sophisticated research projects. These skills are becoming increasingly valued in the field of medicine, which has been undergoing rapid changes.

Currently, medical schools look beyond the required science courses to a range of skills in applicants: the ability to collaborate, to work across disciplines, to be innovative—the very skills built into the Hampshire curriculum.

Student Project Titles

 * The Potential Benefits of Coconut Oil: a Clinical Study of the Effects of Medium Chain Triglycerides on Cholesterol and Satiety
 * Traditional Chinese Medicine in a Modern Biomedical Context: Ganodyrma lucidum and its Polysaccharide Derivatives as Immunomodulators
 * HIV Prevalence in Nicaragua: A Mixed-Method Analysis of the Perspectives of Physicians, Advocacy Groups, and International Organizations
 * Sex Differences in Muscle Response After Forced Eccentric Exercise
 * In My Genes
 * Beyond Barriers: Power, Risk, and HIV Prevention
 * Nutrition and Type II Diabetes in the White Mountain Apache

Featured Faculty Profiles
Christopher D. Jarvis Associate Professor of Cell Biology

Elizabeth Conlisk Associate Professor of Public Health

Cynthia Gill Assistant Professor of Physiology

Sample First-Year Course

 * The Social Determinants of Health

Health varies with social class in all countries of the world, but why? Some of this disparity is clearly due to environmental factors that are associated with class, such as diet, sanitation, and quality of health care. Are there also innate differences in disease susceptibility by factors that correlate with class, such as race and ethnicity? The biologic basis to race has long been discredited, but racial differences in health status are still often assumed to be genetic in origin. This course will use the primary literature to examine the environmental versus genetic basis for group differences in such health outcomes as infant mortality, cervical cancer, and obesity. We will also discuss the use of race in health research and the debate as to whether racial breakdowns help or hinder efforts to eliminate health disparities.

Sample Courses at Hampshire

 * Advanced Skeletal Biology
 * The Biology & Sociology of Sports
 * Bodies, Guts & Bones: A Biocultural Approach to Health
 * Contemporary Issues in International Nutrition
 * The Epidemiology of Women’s Health
 * Healing: Western & Alternative Medicine
 * Healthy Hormones & Modern Ills
 * Historical & Contemporary Perspectives on Reproduction & Infant Development
 * Human Biological Variation
 * Human Biology: Selected Topics in Medicine
 * Human Gene Therapy
 * Human Physiology
 * Immunology

Integrative Seminar in Environmental & Health Education
 * The Making of the Modern Body
 * Migration & Health
 * Natural History of Infectious Diseases
 * Plants & Human Health
 * Race, Science & Disease in Tropical America
 * The Social Determinants of Health
 * Women’s Bodies, Women’s Lives: Biocultural Dialogues of Women’s Health in America

Through the Consortium

 * Cancer and AIDS (AC)
 * Food & Health (UMass)
 * Immunology (MHC)
 * Medical Ethics (UMass)
 * Molecules, Genes & Cells (AC)
 * Women & Exercise–Muscles (SC)
 * Your Genes, Your Chromosomes (SC)

Facilities and Resources
Cole Science Center at Hampshire College boasts some of the most up to date laboratories at any liberal arts college nationwide. Hampshire’s open lab policy makes these facilities available to Natural Science students at all levels. First-year classes regularly use our chemistry, physiology, and osteology laboratories, gaining hands-on experience and learning basic experimental procedures, while Natural Science concentrators at the Division II and III levels design their own original research experiments in such fields as nutrition or genetics.

Students have full access to the labs outside of classroom hours in order to perform and analyze their experiments, and are given appropriate training in the use of complex and sophisticated equipment encountered elsewhere only at the graduate and post-grad level. Hampshire’s laboratory equipment includes a laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, an inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometer, myographic equipment, molecular biology and genetics instruments, a gel electrophoresis and documentation system, polymerase chain reaction instruments for immunology research, and a bone densitometer.

The Five College Certificate Program in Culture, Health, and Science allows students an opportunity to explore human health, disease, and healing from an interdisciplinary perspective. The study of human health requires theoretical frameworks and research strategies that integrate physical and socio-cultural aspects of human experience. Students in the program study health and disease by linking the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

Students interested in pursuing health careers will benefit from interdisciplinary programs in sociomedical sciences and medical humanities. The best health practitioners, researchers, and policy analysts will understand how behavior influences disease distribution and how biomedical categories change across time and culture. They will understand how to communicate research results to audiences of policy makers and to the general public.

Hampshire’s on-campus Health Careers Advising Center is available to help interested students and graduates learn about various health-related professions, evaluate career goals, and, ultimately, gain admission to professional schools when appropriate. The center also provides standardized test preparation, as well as assistance in obtaining clinical and research experiences.

Information Quoted From: http://www.hampshire.edu/admissions/health.htm