Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in Public Health at the University of Colorado Boulder to begin accepting students in Fall of 2025.

We are extremely excited to announce that the Regents of the University of Colorado Boulder have approved our application for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Health to begin accepting students in the Fall of 2025!!!! This has been a long time coming and we know that some of you would have loved to have had this opportunity. Until that time, we will continue awarding Certificates in Public Health, but starting in Fall of 2025, the certificate will become a minor in public health.

The new BA will require some of the required courses for our current certificate, including Foundations of Public Health (GEOG 2692), Introduction to Global Public Health (GEOG 3692), Introduction to Epidemiology (IPHY 3490), a basic biology course (either MCDB 1030 or EBIO 1100), and a statistics course. However, the new major will now require a bioethics course (either PHIL 1160 or PHIL 3160), and a capstone course which will require students to either engage in public health research or do an internship related to public health (the capstone courses are going to be offered soon). The major will round out with electives in the College of Arts and Sciences that focus on topics related to public health.

We also are working on hiring more faculty with expertise in public health. This year, the departments of Geography, Integrative Physiology, and Psychology each led a search for a new tenure track faculty member whose research is on public health within each of those disciplines. There is also a hiring initiative on campus around wellness and we hope that some faculty hired for those positions will teach courses of interest to students of public health here at CU Boulder.