The End of the Semester

It's the end of the semester, which means one thing: finals.  Here in the Trinity HCAD program, our students are in the midst of diligently preparing for final exams in some of their courses, but primarily, much of our coursework revolves around major projects that blend didactic information with applied experience, connecting the classroom to the real world.  One of our differentiating attributes that we are proud to use to our students' advantage is the fact that our student cohorts all progress through the same courses together, allowing faculty members to collaborate across courses for joint projects.  This leads to a more robust, challenging, and meaningful collection of projects that students engage in each semester: rather than dividing their efforts into four or five separate projects for each class, they are challenged to focus and go deeper on two projects covering multiple courses.  For example, the HCAD 5330 (Health Care Organization Theory & Management) and HCAD 5310 (Health Services Organization & Policy I) courses concluded with groups of students presenting and developing written analyses of the major hospital-based systems in San Antonio, addressing elements such as each system's foundational values and history, internal resources, organizational components and configurations, approaches to policy, culture, organizational design, patient focus, and leadership.  Additionally, HCAD 5383 (Health Care Institutional Management) and HCAD 5221 (Operations Management in Health Care Organizations) developed a joint project in which groups of students studied specific service lines, with their research experiences including visiting different facilities and interviewing service line leaders.

Of course, with all of that work, students have to let off some steam and maintain a sense of balance in their busy lives (a critical lesson to be learned on its own right for young health care administrators!)  As seen in this picture, sometimes that means finding the biggest slice of pizza in the city and enjoying it with 22 of your close friends.