Health Education in Higher Education: What Is the Future?

I am honored as well as humbled to be here with you this morning as the 2011 American Association for Health Education (AAHE) Scholar. There is no greater recognition than the recognition from peers. As we just heard during the AAHE General Meeting, the health education profession is evolving. There is little doubt that the choices being made today by all of us as health educators will affect the future of health education in great ways. These are intentional choices that will allow the profession to meet the needs of health educators in all settings and continue to be a strong advocate for health education research, policy, and practice. I am proud to be a member of this profession and to be engaged in what I think will be a turning point for the profession. Like all of my esteemed AAHE Scholar recipients before me, our passion, our career, and our profession has been a journey. I want to provide a brief glimpse of my journey, of how I got where I am today, and acknowledge a few people who helped me make some good choices along the way. MY HEALTH EDUCATION JOURNEY AND CHOICES I am a health educator. That statement seems self-evident today standing here before you. I am not exactly sure when I came to this realization, but most likely during my doctoral studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC). The choices I made along the way have helped shape who I am personally and professionally as a health educator. The road to becoming a health educator was not a straight line. Like many freshmen college students today who enter college wanting to become a doctor or lawyer, I wanted to be a dentist. And like many freshmen today, my dream was short-lived when my lack of acumen for physics and calculus became all too apparent. It was time for a choice--one strongly encouraged by the university. I enrolled at a community college and successfully completed an associate of science degree in dental hygiene. I began practicing dental hygiene. But there was a burning desire to earn a bachelor's degree. So, I went back to the University of Toledo, taking most of my courses in the evening while working during the day. I enrolled in several stacked courses, where graduate and undergraduate students were in the same class. This is where I met Dr. James Price, who many of you recognize as the 2008 AAHE Scholar. During my undergraduate program, Dr. Price encouraged me to earn a master's degree and subsequently offered me an assistantship. Knowing little about either, I talked with my parents and the dentists I worked for, Drs. Robert Stearns and William Zouhary. Both not only encouraged me but allowed me to cut my hours back from 40 to 20 hours a week so I could go to school and also have the assistantship. Once in the master's program I found what I enjoyed doing--teaching and conducting research to understand health behavior. My next question was "How do I do this full-time?" The answer was plain and simple: you need a doctorate degree. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined completing a master's degree, let alone a doctorate. So, during our spring break in 1984 my good friend and now colleague Dr. Sharon Desmond hopped in my maroon Chevy Citation and traveled to several universities to check them out. I decided on Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. It was a good choice. But I don't think I still fully understood what being a health educator was or meant. During my time at SIU-C I took courses with such health education legends as Drs. Elena Sliepcevich and Bob Russell (both AAHE Scholars). It was also during this time that I met Dr. Robert McDermott (2000 AAHE Scholar), who was, for a brief time, my major professor and later became a valued colleague at the University of South Florida College of Public Health. During my final year at SIU-C, I had a conversation with Dr. Sliepcevich about accepting an opportunity at a community college as a dental hygiene instructor. Her advice: "Stay and finish your degree and become a health educator. …