Facilitating A Calling

Running Head: FACILITATING A CALLING 1
Facilitating a Calling: An Evaluation of the Loyola’s Pre-Health Professions Office
Greg Grenard and Frank Inglima
Loyola University Chicago

FACILITATING A CALLING 2
Table of Contents
Program Context…………………………………………………………………………… 4
Department Overview………………………………………………………………. 4
Program Description………………………………………………………………... 5
Program History…………………………………………………………………….. 6
Program Mission……………………………………………………………………. 6
Connection to Institutional Mission…………………………………...……………. 7
Learning/Developmental Goals….…………………………………………………. 8
Program Need……..…………………………………………………………………….. 11
Program Focus……..…………………………………………………………………… 14
Program Goals and Logic Model…………………………………………………………... 15
Program Goals..……..…………………………………………………………………... 15
Logic Model…..……..…………………………………………………………………... 18
Assessment Purpose….…………………………………………………………………….. 21
Program Assessment Needs…...………………………………………………………… 21
Utility of Assessment..…………………………………………………………………... 22
Assessment Approach….…..………………………………………………………………. 23
Assessment Type…..…………………………………………………………………… 23
Assessment Outcomes and Purpose……………………………………………………... 24
Assessment Questions…………………………………………………………………… 25
Existing Institutional and Program Data………..……………………………………….. 26
Quantitative Methods……………………………………………………………………..... 27
Assessment Design…………………………………………………………………. 27
Proposed Survey Instrument……….……………………………………………….. 29
Quantitative Analytic Plan………………………………………………………….. 31
Qualitative Methods………………………………………………………………………... 33
Qualitative Approach………...……………………………………………………... 33
Participant Selection……………….…………………………………………....….. 35
Focus Group Protocol Instrument……………………………………………...…… 36
Focus Group Implementation…………..…………………………………………... 37
Qualitative Analysis……………………………………………………...…………. 40
Presentation of Data……………………………………………………...…………. 44
Assessment Limitations…………………………………………………………...……….. 44
Budget……………………………………………………………………………...………. 46
Timeline and Next Steps…………………………………………………………...………. 47
References.………………………………………………………………………...……….. 48
Appendices………………………………………………………………………...……….. 52
Appendix A: Logic Model…………………………………………………...……... 52
Appendix B: NAAHP Best Practices ………………………………………...…….. 54
Appendix C: Survey Map………………………………………………..…...…….. 56
Appendix D: Survey.…………………………………………………………...…... 67
Appendix E: Email Templates………………………………………………............ 85
Appendix F: Informed Consent Form ………………………………………....…… 88
Appendix G: Demographic Variable Form …………………………………....……90
Appendix H: Focus Group Protocol…………………………………………………91
Appendix I: Focus Group Location………………………………………………… 95

Appendix J: PowerPoint Presentation……………………………………………… 96
Program Context
Loyola University was founded in Chicago in 1870 and is the city’s only Jesuit university and
one of the country’s largest (At a Glance, 2017). Loyola has a total enrollment of 16,673
students and offers more than 80 undergraduate majors, 80 minors, and 170 graduate,
professional, and graduate-level certificate programs (At a Glance, 2017). Loyola employs over
4,000 faculty and staff members and has an alumni network of roughly 150,000, with 85,000 of
those being Chicago-based. The university boasts three campuses in Illinois alone and one in
Rome, Italy. Some course locations also include sites in China, Vietnam, as well as Vernon
Hills, Illinois and Woodstock, Illinois (At a Glance, 2017).
Department Overview
The Pre-Health Professions Office (PHPO) is a division of Loyola’s Career Development
Center (CDC), which has a variety of functions at the university; these include the facilitation of
relationships between employers and Loyola students and alumni, as well as career development
resources. The CDC is responsible for educating students and alumni on career exploration
through self-reflection, identity development, and career exploration through research and
experience. The CDC works with multiple colleges and schools at Loyola, such as the College
of Arts and Sciences, the Quinlan School of Business, The School of Education, and the School
of nursing, along with other departments. The CDC office itself falls under the Division of
Student Academic Services, which itself is under the direction of the Office of the Provost. In
addition to general career development, the CDC offers specialty programs for unique
populations like first-generation students and student athletes, as well as specialty advising
offices for particular career fields, such as pre-law advising and pre-health advising (Career
Development Center Quick Facts, n.d.).

Program Description
The Pre-Health Professions Office, as a division of Loyola’s Career Development Center,
is a relatively small component of both the CDC and Student Academic Services as a
whole. The office is designed to advise students who are seeking careers in various healthcare
fields. Careers typically sought, but not limited to, are medical doctor, doctor of osteopathic
medicine, dental, pharmacy, physician’s assistant, physical therapy, occupational therapy,
optometry, podiatry, and veterinary fields. The office employs only five dedicated staff for its
operations; there is one associate director, one full-time advisor, one part-time advisor, a
graduate assistant, and an administrative assistant. The associate director reports directly to the
assistant provost for academic services and has relatively infrequent contact with upper
administration of the university such as the Vice Provost, Provost, or President.
In addition to this set of dedicated staff, the office is augmented with supplementary
advisors and other faculty when undergoing its annual Pre-Health Professions Advisory
Committee (PHPAC) process during the winter intersession, the spring semester, and part of the
summer between semesters. The PHPAC guides and advises Loyola students and alumni who
are in the process of applying to health professional schools for matriculation in the following
year. Undergraduate seniors and alumni are evaluated by the committee individually on their
overall merit as an applicant, and the committee writes a detailed letter of recommendation for
use in a student’s application. Students admitted into the Pre-Health Professions Advisory
Committee process are the ones only seeking careers in the Medical Doctor (M.D.), Doctor of
Osteopathy (D.O.), or dental disciplines (Health Professions, n.d.). In contrast to the small set of
full-time staff, the number of students who identify as pre-health are quite high. Upon entry to
Loyola, roughly one-third to one-half of incoming freshman self-report as pre-health

oriented. While this large number of pre-health students reduces in size over the course of time,
approximately 300 students are accepted into the Pre-Health Professions Advisory Committee
each year.
Program History
The Pre-Health Professions Office was created in response to a growing interest in health
careers in Loyola students approximately fifteen to twenty years ago. Originally situated as part
of a different office, the pre-health program was restructured and placed within the department
offices of the Career Development Center in 2012.
Program Mission
The Pre-Health Professions Office does not have an explicit mission statement listed
publicly, but their main purpose is to guide, advise, and evaluate Loyola students who are
interested in applying to health professional schools. In other words, the office assists students
in achieving their goal of being accepted to health professional school where they can further
their education in order to enter the healthcare field of their choice. The Pre-Health Professions
Office was created to assist undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students in their pursuit of
professional careers in various health fields. The office provides a variety of services that are
designed to increase students’ chances of a successful admission into health professional
schools. The office uses a comprehensive approach to achieve this, by advising students on the
many different health professions for their placement in professions that suit their interests and
goals, hosting workshops that inform students on the necessary curricular, co-curricular, and
extracurricular qualities that make a qualified applicant, and connecting advisees with volunteer
opportunities to fulfill clinical experience requirements. In addition, the office works directly
with students on writing a personal statement that articulates their motivations for pursuing a
career in medical professions, navigating the complex admissions process, offering training on
creating a well-rounded application, and connecting students to other university resources.
Connection to Institutional Mission
Loyola University’s mission statement is short and simple: “We are Chicago’s Jesuit,
Catholic University. A diverse community seeking God in all things and working to expand
knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice and faith” (Loyola University
Chicago Mission and Identity, n.d.). The Pre-Health Professions Office aligns with the
institution’s mission statement by guiding their students to furthering their education so they can
enter professions whose primary goal is to “serve humanity,” in this case, through caring for
patients. A large component of this is working in service of disadvantaged populations to bring
them the most basic necessities of healthcare. Students advised by the Pre-Health Professions
Office are encouraged to work in the service of others through health care, not only because it is
good for their application and provides them with valuable clinical experience, but is something
they will be compelled to do once they enter their professional field as well.
Loyola’s mission statement is further expanded upon in the institution’s strategic plan,
“Plan 2020.” Under Plan 2020, Loyola has identified four institutional priorities (Loyola
University Chicago Plan 2020, 2015). The first strategic initiative of Plan 2020 is the leveraging
of university resources to ensure student success. The Pre-Health Professions Office ties into
this initiative through its enhanced academic support to students via its specialty advising
processes, and the support of its students through the advisory committee, which has a specific
mission of medical school admission preparation and interview practice for career readiness and
post-graduation success. The second initiative of Plan 2020 is the advancement of Loyola’s
social justice mission through faculty development. The Pre-Health Professions Office has
ongoing training programs in place for advisors and committee members who are responsible for
guiding advisees into transformative experiential education and planning student’s academic
progression that promotes intellectual diversity and values-based leadership, qualities that are
strongly considered during the admissions process. This multidisciplinary collaboration in
curriculum is Loyola’s third institutional initiative, and the Pre-Health Professions Office directs
its advising services in line with Loyola’s plan to focus additional resources and enhance its
curriculum in science, technology, engineering, and medical education. Loyola’s fourth
institutional priority, engaging in local and global societal partnerships, does not align with the
Pre-Health Professions Office directly.
From the Career Development Center’s website, they state their mission as:
“The mission of the Career Development Center (CDC) is to educate, counsel,
and empower Loyola students and alumni through their self-identity and career
exploration process. We encourage the practices of personal reflection and intensive
exploration of the marketplace through research and experience, believing that career
satisfaction is born of an authentic understanding of the self and the needs of the
world. The CDC provides the guidance and resources necessary to facilitate this
transformative process.” (Career Development Center Quick Facts, n.d.).
The Pre-Health Professions Office contributes to the actions in this mission statement by
meeting with and really getting to know their advisees. It is important for advisors to understand
who the student is and what their motivation is so they can evaluate the student to advise them of
all the steps they should be taking in preparation for their career pursuits.
Learning/Developmental Goals
Successful admission into medical schools requires that students not only complete a
rigorous education in science curriculum, but that applicants are well-rounded individuals that
possess a myriad of skills beyond scientific knowledge. Simmons (2005) explains that medical
school admissions officers heavily recommend a broad based education with exposure to liberal
arts disciplines such as philosophy, ethics, or psychology in addition to science
curriculum. Simmons (2005) suggests that the augmentation of science education with a broad
liberal education not only stimulates intellectual exploration, but that the critical thinking skills
and ethical reasoning taught in these non-scientific courses will assist doctors in making
informed and moral clinical decisions in their practice. Education beyond the sciences has also
been reported by premedical students as essential for improving their communication skills and
cultural awareness, qualities that are highly sought after by medical school admission boards
(Simmons, 2005). The balance of science education with liberal education is an important aspect
of advising premedical students on their academic planning and progression through
undergraduate education.
Elam, Taylor, and Nelson-Strother (1996) agree, citing a shift in medical school
pedagogical models from memorization of information to a focus on group work, critical
evaluation of medical literature, and application of knowledge from multiple
disciplines. Admission boards are focused on evaluating applicants across multiple dimensions
of learning and development, and are increasingly incorporating non-academic factors into the
admissions process. Intrapersonal qualities such as integrity, leadership, and motivation are
taken into consideration when assessing applicants, as well as interpersonal skills such as
empathy, effective communication, teamwork, and collaboration toward common goals.

While pre-health advisors cannot engender these qualities in their students, Elam et al.
(1996) contend that premedical advisors are key to guiding this student population into diverse
educational programming and nurturing knowledge of the medical profession by exposing
students to experiential opportunities and internships, which give these students a more intimate
knowledge of medical professions. Johnson, Settimi, and Rogers (2001) also stress the
importance of exposure to multiple careers in the field of medicine and health, arguing the need
to give students opportunities to explore appropriate career paths in many medical fields for
career discernment purposes. They assert that this exposure is invaluable; it is a vital first step in
developing practical competence skills of career management and in identifying and pursuing
goals. These internships and experiential learning courses are an opportunity for personal
growth, knowledge acquisition and application, and interpersonal development through
establishing relationships, which are essential elements of learning and development outcomes as
defined by the Council for the Advancement of Standards, such as interpersonal competence and
intrapersonal development (Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education,
2008).
Clinical experience is a requirement for nearly all medical admission boards, and pre-
health advisors are expected to facilitate these opportunities for their advisees. These non-
academic factors, Elam et al. (1996) argue, are an important factor of a comprehensive medical
school application as they present a candidate as more than just numbers, but add a “human
dimension” (p. 37) to the applicant and establish a more evolved view of the student’s academic,
experiential, and personal qualities that make an ideal medical school student. These qualities
are best demonstrated to medical school admission boards via the admission interview, which is
a vital locale for applicants to communicate their interpersonal skills, critical thinking ability,
and to articulate one’s motivation for pursuing a medical education. Interviews give admission
boards a composite picture of the applicant’s learning and development, and Elam et al. (1996)
explain that admission boards place a significant emphasis on interviews during the admissions
process as they “recognize that their work has a clear and direct impact on the medical
profession…[and] plays a role in shaping the future of medicine.” (p. 37). These interviews also
give insight into the candidate’s potential to achieve the professional development and
educational goals of the institution to which they are applying. This focus on interviews means
that interview preparation is essential for the success of pre-health students.
Program Need
Applying for medical school is a complicated and intense process. Most, if not all
students, need some guidance over their academic career to ensure they are adequately preparing
themselves for not only admission, but success in medical school as well. First, students must
take into consideration which branch or field of medicine they would like to enter. This requires
much reflection and information gathering on the part of the student. Pre-health advisors are one
of the primary resources for this information and can help the student organize and make sense
of the information overload they might encounter on their own. “[Advisors] are well positioned
to help students evaluate their choices and understand the far-reaching consequences of those
choices” (Johnson et al., 2001, p. 25).
However, with consistently changing criteria and components of the standardized
Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), pre-health advisors must also provide students with
the most up-to-date information on this and adjust their curricular advising to reflect this. For
example, two fairly recent changes to the MCAT now include a new social component as well as
a behavioral science component (Ferren & Ferren, 2012). Not only must advisors inform their
students of this, but they may need to recommend students add varied coursework in disciplines
such as sociology or psychology (Ferren & Ferren, 2012). Increasingly, medical schools have
begun to understand that non-cognitive components, such as professionalism, empathy, and
creativity play an important role in the success of a student in medical school and in medical
practice (Elam et al, 1996).
Prior to MCAT revisions in the last few years, college students invested a significant
majority of time and effort into academics, to the detriment of engaging in experiences that are
designed to develop personal growth and traits such as responsibility, coping skills, and
challenging experiences outside of students’ comfort zones (Wagoner, 2006). Pre-health
advisory committees recognize that test scores and grade point averages do not take full account
of the human element of medical student applicants, and Wagoner (2006) posits that premedical
advisory offices are necessary to work with students in guiding them into experiential
opportunities to foster this development, as well as develop close advisor-student relationships to
closely monitor the student’s growth in teamwork skills, maturity, judgement, and commitment
to service. Wagoner (2006) argues that premedical programs must carefully consider their
advisor’s student loads as well, because these programs can often have hundreds of students in
their organizations, which can impede their ability to know advisees on a deeper, personal
level. This can reduce the advisor’s ability to monitor student development and can lead to
evaluation letters for admission boards that are formulaic in nature, containing basic information
such as courses taken and grades received, rather than a comprehensive, detailed evaluation of
the student’s varied qualifications for medical school.
Pursuing a medical profession is a serious commitment and medical schools want to
make certain they are accepting only the most dedicated students. Two extremely important
components to the medical school application are the student’s autobiography and personal
statement. Medical schools read these application components very carefully, therefore it can be
critical for students to have a deep understanding of the self in order write these two pieces
strongly. Self-authorship is a useful model to help students develop this deeper
understanding. Students need to understand how their experiences caused them to realize their
calling of becoming a medical professional. They must develop an advanced belief system and
internal foundation where they are in control of what meaning they assign to outside influences
and events that happen to them. This causes the building of relationships that are more authentic,
higher maturity and confidence in decision-making, and productive collaboration among peers
(Schulenberg, 2013). Baxter-Magolda (1998) observes that “promoting self-authorship is a
complex process in which students must be validated as knowers and taught to construct
meaning with others” (p. 155).
Pizzolato (2006) agrees with Baxter-Magolda’s assertion that advisors are a critical
aspect of self-authorship development. They not only validate students as knowers and help
them construct meaning, but advisors also facilitate a change in students’ ways of knowing and
help them integrate internally defined goals to situate the sense of self in the decision-making
process. Decision making for premedical students requires the assessment of situations,
understanding expectations of medical school candidate qualifications, and an incorporation of
the internal voice and desires in following a student’s aspirations to medical professional
fields. For many pre-health students entering college, academic and career paths are often
chosen for extrinsic reasons; students frequently report that their decision to pursue this career
path was made due to external factors such as family member input or by conforming to the
goals of their peers. Advisors assist their students in the self-authorship process by helping them
identify these obstacles and engage in strategies that develop their internal voice, critically
evaluate their motivations, and provoke students into making purposeful choices in career
planning, academic planning, and overcoming obstacles to their goals (Pizzolato, 2008). When
meeting with students, advisors help them reflect on what their experiences mean to them in
relation to their medical profession calling.
The application process for medical school is a complicated and arduous one. It
necessitates interventions that pre-health offices offer, such as workshops that detail important
deadlines and other application information, mock interviews, personal statement writing
workshops, and curricular, cocurricular, and extracurricular advising. Navigating this process is
nearly impossible to do alone. Many premedical students have the reputation of being narrowly
focused on academics. It is the important job of pre-health advisors to ensure these students
grow and develop into more well-rounded individuals. From taking the correct courses to
prepare them for admission tests to advising them from which faculty members to request letters
of recommendation, pre-health advisors guide and support students through their entire journey
of gaining admission to medical school.
Program Focus
The general focus of the Pre-Health Professions Office is to assist students into getting
accepted into their field of choice within the health profession schools. In general, the office
works with students exploring any of the health professions, and especially those preparing to
apply to graduate school in one of the health professions. This work revolves around one-on-one
student meetings, informational workshops, and processes like the Pre-Health Professions
Advisory Committee to guide students. Aside from informing students about what they should
be taking, doing, and the myriad of other myriad of requirements set forth by medical school, the
Pre-Health Professions Office must assist in students reflecting over their reasons and motivation
for pursuing a career in medicine, as this is something that the students need to effectively
communicate to their prospective schools through the application and in-person interviews.
Pre-health advisors assist students with this by meeting one-on-one to share stories and
experiences of what drives their passion for the field. In his auto ethnographic exploration of the
multiple dimensions of identity, Jones (2009) discussed the power of constructing and sharing,
and hearing the narratives of others for students. He said that “[narrative sharing] could be
replicated and used as a developmental intervention with both undergraduate students as well as
graduate students in student affairs programs to promote understanding of their own identity
construction and appreciation for the complexity of the process when privileged and oppressed
identities are considered” (Jones, 2009).
The Pre-Health Professions Office also follows the twelve best practices set forth by the
National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (NAAHP, 2013). Please see
Appendix B for the complete list of these best practices. For our assessment, we will specifically
focus on the sixth professional standard or best practice. We will be looking at how well many
of the resources that go into maintaining the pre-health committee support student
development. Processes like mock interviews, application workshops, academic planning and
advising, and teaching to write and articulate and strong personal statement all go into the
PHPAC process and will be proposed for assessment because these processes are instrumental in
supporting students’ goals of medical professional school admission.
Program Goals and Logic Model
Program Goals
There are four primary goals of the Pre-Health Professions Office. First, pre-health
advisors must work with their advisees to determine if students are truly interested in pursuing a
career in medicine. Approximately one third to as much as one half of incoming undergraduate
students report that they are pre-health, and thus career exploration and discernment is an
important first step of the office. Separating the students who are truly determined to pursue a
career in medicine from those who are not is vital, as the resources of the office are
limited. Second, for students who are decisively in pursuit of premedical education, the pre-
health advisors must then assist advisees in the construction of academic plans for enrollment in
science courses that are required for entry into medical school. These courses, such as biology,
chemistry, and physics are prerequisites to medical school curriculum, but are also large
components of the MCAT. Increasingly, advisors must take into account the supplementation of
science courses and other medical school prerequisite classes with broad-based liberal education,
as medical school admission boards have begun to emphasize broad curricular knowledge as
essential for a well-rounded applicant.
Third, advisors are also responsible for facilitating internships and other clinical
experience for students, as medical schools require exposure to the field outside of the
classroom. Advisors are responsible for explaining the clinical experience requirements,
offering information on where to look for experiential opportunities that tie into their career
goals, and developing partnerships with hospitals and other medical offices for student
placement in internship programs. Finally, the Pre-Health Professions Office must educate
students on the construction of a comprehensive, complete medical school application and
navigating the various application systems, both complex tasks that require intervention on the
part of advisors. The Pre-Health Professions Office works with its advisees to assist in the
writing of an effective personal statement, communicating the student’s motivation for pursuing
a career in medicine, and holds mock interviews with its advisees to train them on how to
prepare for a medical school admission interview.
Since our assessment is focusing on the Pre-Health Professions Office’s four primary
goals (career discernment, academic planning, experiential learning, and professional school
admission), it is important to understand the activities they have in place to facilitate these
goals. When working with students on career exploration and discernment, the Pre-Health
Professions Office uses a number of strategies to assist students in making informed choices as
to their career aspirations. Through its academic advising services, students are given a wealth
of information about the various healthcare related fields- in addition to common careers in
medicine such as M.D. and D.O. professions, the Pre-Health Professions Office exposes students
to many alternative medical fields, to include physician assistants, dentists, pharmacists,
occupational therapists, veterinarians, and much more. To gain more insight into these career
fields, the Pre-Health Professions Office works in tandem with the Career Development Center
at Loyola, which uses a multitude of websites that assist students in discovering more
information about potential careers, assists in matching certain academic majors to particular
careers, and provides information on resume building, job search techniques, and job recruitment
processes. Pre-health advisors are also responsible for assisting students in academic planning,
where they communicate the curricular requirements of their major, in addition to the
prerequisite courses required for health professional schools, and guide students in making a
detailed plan for course progression. Proper course progression is important, for example, when
preparing to take the MCAT. The MCAT has several components of the exam that require
knowledge of certain subjects such as biology, inorganic and organic chemistry, and it is
essential that students are prepared for this exam by having previously taken these courses prior
to taking the MCAT.
At a minimum, students in the pre-health program who are applying to the advisory
committee must have fifty hours of clinical or internship experience in healthcare related fields,
though many programs require even more than fifty hours. Pre-health advisors, prior to the
committee process, are an essential tool to help students identify clinical experience or internship
requirements, determine what kinds of programs or internships qualify, and even partner with
local area hospitals and medical clinics to help with the placement of students in these positions
to gain experience. Finally, pre-health advisors work closely with students to prepare them for
the complex process of medical school admission. This requires a number of workshops to
develop essential skills that are tested during a medical school admission board, such as writing
an effective personal statement that captures the individual's motivation and passion for pursuing
a medical education, and workshops on the admission interview process to develop key
interpersonal skills that will result in a successful admission interview. To determine how much
students have learned, PHPAC members will engage in “mock interviews” which closely
resemble actual medical school admission interviews, and evaluate the student’s performance to
identify areas that they need to improve in order to make themselves a stronger candidate.
Logic Model
Logic models are visual representations that help assessment practitioners determine the
relationships between the inputs and resources in the assessed program, the program’s outputs in
the form of its activities, and the intended effects as represented in their short, medium, and long-
term outcomes (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004). The logic model for the program (Appendix
A) begins with the basic factors- or barriers- of the Pre-Health Professions Office, situating its
need for assessment in its continual struggle for resource allocation from upper level university
administration. As one pre-health advisor stated, “We are asked every year to do more with
less”, and the Pre-Health Professions Office believes that an assessment of the processes and
outcomes of the program would provide university administration with a more evolved view of
program effectiveness and demonstrate resource needs.
With respect to inputs, logic models visualize the resources available to the program,
whether human, financial, organizational, or other. This is used to identify what the program can
do with these resources. The logic model demonstrates that the principal inputs are financial and
personnel in nature. The financial investment in the Pre-Health Professions Office is currently at
a minimal level, as noted in the Logic Model (Appendix A), due to its small amount of dedicated
staff and the augmentation of temporary advisors and committee members who are only utilized
during the committee process, and not throughout the year. This is a financial limiting factor as
these augmented staff are only affiliated with the Pre-Health Professions Office during the
PHPAC process. Costs are additionally limited, with short training classes for these
supplementary staff. Manuals and other reference materials on the committee processes are
available for these staff, as well as the use of best practice models of the NAAHP. Training
classes are short and provide limited information to supplementary staff, while manuals, which
are mandatory for supplementary advisors and committee members, are not always read by these
staff, resulting in a nonhomogeneous level of training.
Following the logic model design, these inputs are then translated into program outputs,
which are comprised of activities and participation (Henning & Roberts, 2016). Despite the
financial and personnel limitations in the Pre-Health Professions Office, the program is able to
execute a number of activities, which generally center around the four main categories of
program goals described in the logic model: career exploration and discernment, academic
planning, experiential learning, and professional or graduate school admission. These activities
are provided to pre-health identified students across their entire educational experience, from
entry into college through their bachelor's degree attainment.
As the program executes these activities over a long period of time, logic models separate
their outcomes, which are defined as “specific changes in program participants’ behavior,
knowledge, skills, status, and level of functioning” (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004, p. 2) into
short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes. As illustrated in the logic model, the short -term
outcomes are intended to be achieved after the program’s initial advising appointment. Initial
advising appointments are intended to give the pre-health students learning and awareness of
different career fields, academic requirements for both their major and medical school admission
prerequisite courses, and knowledge of proper academic planning to achieve these academic
goals. Further, these appointments are intended to give pre-health students a basic introduction
to clinical experience or internship requirements, which are mandatory for medical school
admission, and to provide them with knowledge on where to find resources on these
requirements and how to establish internships. Finally, these initial advising appointments walk
students through the basic components of a complete, comprehensive medical school application,
as the process is complex and requires multiple components such as personal statements and
admission interviews to be prepared.
After a few years, students go onto the next step of the program, which is entry into the
Pre-Health Professions Advisory Committee. By this point, students will have made a career
choice, followed their academic plan to meet all academic requirements, and connected career
interests into specific clinical experiences or internships. With program activities in the PHPAC
such as workshops on writing personal statements and undergoing mock interviews, students at
this phase will possess all of the components necessary to create a complete medical school
application. Long-term outcomes of logic models build upon short- and medium- term outcomes
and result in changes in status or life conditions (W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004). They
represent a shift in focus from learning and application to the ultimate impact of the program.
When applied to the pre-health program, students achieve long-term outcomes when they have
successfully completed their bachelor’s degree while fulfilling all medical school prerequisite
courses. In addition, students will have completed the MCAT and required internship hours, as
well as filing an application through the American Medical College Application Service
(AMCAS), the standard application service for nearly all medical schools in the United
States. Additionally, students will have prepared and sent applications to various medical
schools, which include completed personal statements, and successfully undergo the interview
process to complete the application process.
Assessment Purpose
Program Assessment Needs
Occasional changes in leadership at the operational and financial decision-making level
of Loyola University necessitate the Pre-Health Professions Office to annually justify their
functions and processes and explain all that goes into supporting pre-health students. Budgeting
decisions are made for each division or department of the university on an annual basis. The
Pre-Health Professions Office can use an assessment of their services as a way to justify putting
university resources to toward supporting those services. The Pre-Health Professions Office
wants to know how well the processes or intervention methods they use with students help them
build and develop specific skills as they relate to building a strong medical or dental school
application.
The proposed assessment is interested in both outcomes and processes. For the Pre-
Health Professions Office, these two components go hand-in-hand. The office seeks an
assessment of how well their processes facilitate fulfilling the medium-term student learning
outcomes located in the program's logic model. For instance, one of their processes is
conducting mock-interviews for students to simulate an interview they would have with an
admissions officer of a medical school. This is designed to achieve the goal of interview
preparedness. Some of the outcomes assessed for this particular goal would be that the student
would be prepared to respond to likely questions, they would be able to clearly articulate their
motivation for the field, and they would further develop overall interpersonal skills. In this case,
the office would like to assess how well these outcomes were achieved in order to understand if
changes should be made in the process of mock interviews.
Utility of Assessment
The results of this assessment are useful not only to the Pre-Health Professions Office
itself, but to a larger degree, Loyola’s Career Development Center, the Office of the Provost, and
the Office of the President. The Pre-Health Professions Office has expressed concerns that the
program is not widely understood outside of the Career Development Center, and there is
consistent feedback from Loyola administration to produce the same level of results with less
resources and financing. Because the majority of advisors on the Pre-Health Professions
Advisory Committee are not dedicated staff, additional funding is required to compensate these
advisors for their training, time, and input in the committee process. The inclusion of writers for
evaluation letters adds an additional expense, and the Pre-Health Professions Office must
consistently justify this to higher administration staff. The results of this assessment could
provide justification for maintaining or raising the resources and funding of the program or even
justifying the actual existence of it.
Assessment Approach
Assessment Type
The current medical school admission rate for students who have completed the Pre-
Health Professions Advisory Committee process to its conclusion is approximately 80%, a
success rate that is substantially above the national average of 39.6% in 2016 (American
Association of Medical Colleges, 2016). The primary concern of the Pre-Health Professions
Office is not in improving this acceptance rate, but in demonstrating the necessity of the
program’s resources and funding to university administration. It is the opinion of the Pre-Health
Professions Office that university administration who are not explicitly involved in the program
do not have a clear understanding of the program’s processes and needs, and the Pre-Health
Professions Office seeks an assessment that will justify the current level of financial and
personnel investment in the program to keep its successful admission rate high. When
determining the type of assessment for a particular issue, it is important to understand that the
reason for the assessment must meet the evaluation need. Henning & Roberts (2016) argue that a
formative assessment is appropriate when an assessment is continuous, and that the data and
feedback from the assessment is used to guide program improvements. When an assessment is
made at the conclusion of a program, and the data from the assessment is used to justify the
success or failure of the program, or to justify the resources or existence of the program itself
(Henning & Roberts, 2016) then a summative assessment is most appropriate. As the nature of
this assessment is addressing the success of the program as a function of its financial investment,
a summative assessment of the Pre-Health Professions Office and Pre-Health Professions
Advisory Committee is the most practical form of assessment for this program.
The Pre-Health Professions Office recommends a cross-sectional as opposed to
longitudinal approach for this assessment. While a longitudinal approach might be the most
beneficial approach as many of the Pre-Health Professions Office’s processes occur over a two-
year period, we agree that a cross-sectional approach would be more feasible. Collecting our
data from students at one particular point in time rather than data collected over that two-year
period is limited in the sense that the program would not be able to collect evidence on student
growth over those two years. However, this approach would also be much less time-consuming
and will yield a higher amount of data since there would not be a concern of losing part of the
sample over the two-year period. Additionally, the summative data that the office analyzes at the
end of every application cycle is “pretty strong” by their own admission in terms of students
successfully being admitted to medical school. A cross-sectional approach would prove useful
by utilizing student surveys for how well an outcome is performed as a result of each process or
intervention.
Assessment Outcomes/Processes
We are proposing to focus on the program’s medium-term outcomes located in our logic
model, which should be met after students submit their application to health professional
schools. This occurs in a timeframe that corresponds with the first semester of students’ senior
year at LUC. The Pre-Health Profession Office’s processes we are assessing are outlined under
the activities section of the logic model, and are grouped under each of the office’s goals. These
processes include advisor counseling on careers, internships, and academic planning; additional
processes of the Pre-Health Professions Office are partnerships with the CDC for career
discernment assistance, workshops on personal statements and admission interviews, and mock
interviews with pre-health advisors. The Pre-Health Professions Office seeks to understand how
these processes are involved in the achievement of the medium-term outcomes on the logic
model, specifically whether they successfully promote or are impeding the achievement of those
outcomes. Assessing these outcomes and processes are important because it will identify
deficits in how these processes deliver on the student learning outcomes so that corrections or
adjustments may be made in how the processes are delivered. Additionally, the assessment may
also suggest to Loyola University Chicago leadership that the processes delivered are very
effective in cultivating the student learning outcomes, which may warrant additional financial
and human resources dedicated to the Pre-Health Professions Office.
Assessment Questions
While the Pre-Health Professions Office is confident in the delivery of their processes
positively affecting the student learning outcomes because the acceptance rate of their advisees
into medical school is high (consistently between 75 and 80 percent per year), they are primarily
interested in demonstrating a more nuanced understanding of the effectiveness of their program
in order to justify continued resources. In addition to the summative nature of this assessment,
the program is also interested in using the assessment findings to understand how it could
improve its programming. Therefore, our specific assessment questions are:
1. Do students who participate in the Pre-Health Professions Office demonstrate
achievement of the program’s medium-term learning outcomes?
2. Which processes, if any, promote or hinder the achievement of the student learning
outcomes?
3. Additionally, since medical schools are interested in applicants of any college major,
are student learning outcomes fulfilled to different degrees depending on the students’
majors?
Existing Institutional and Program Data
The Pre-Health Professions Office was moved to the Career Development Center in
2012, and there has been no assessment done since that time and no known assessment prior to
the 2012 reorganization. The Pre-Health Professions Office collects data on each of the
approximately 300 students who enter the Pre-Health Professions Advisory Committee. Student
data are used to evaluate retention rates of pre-health track students, student eligibility for the
Pre-Health Professions Advisory Committee, candidate application strength for admission into
medical schools, and admission rates for medical school applications. One set of data they keep
is a log of total appointments made with the office’s advisors over a year. These particular usage
metrics are related to one-on-one advising appointments only. Workshop attendance is not kept
by the office. The Pre-Health Professions Office collects satisfaction metrics from students
about their overall experiences with the office. These metrics seem more general in nature and
are not very specific to any of the interventions used by the office. The satisfaction metrics are
gathered via surveys given regularly to students as they come into the office, by either
appointment or walk-in.
During advisee evaluations, the Pre-Health Professions Office uses specific criteria to
comprehensively assign a rating to each of the 300 advisees during the Pre-Health Professions
Advisory Committee meetings. Each student is rated very highly recommend, highly
recommend, recommend with confidence, or recommend with reservations. These ratings go
into the committee letter of recommendation that accompanies the application packet to the
medical schools to where the students are applying. The criteria taken into consideration include
institutional data such as GPA and negative or positive grade trend via transcript review. Other
criteria include student autobiography, personal statement, resume, personal letters of evaluation,
involvement in health profession related volunteer or work activities, extracurricular activities,
community service, research experience, general work experience, challenges faced, and one-on-
one interactions with pre-health advisors, the assigned Committee Advisor, other members of the
Committee, and with other Loyola faculty and staff. The Pre-Health Professions Office also
collects data on how many of the students who applied to medical schools through the Pre-
Health Professions Advisory Committee were actually accepted into at least one of them. For
our assessment, we will need to collect new data that will directly relate to the effects of student
learning on the specific processes offered by the Pre-Health Professions Office as means to assist
students in obtain medical school admission. We already know that the statistics the office
collects on their students’ admission rate is strong, but our assessment seeks to be more
descriptive, exploring what processes work well, what processes may not work well. Out of the
institutional data collected by the office, we may be able to use GPA and grade trend determine
if these data improved after a specific process was experienced by a student, although care
should be exercised in generalizing as not all processes being assessed may relate directly to
student academic performance.
Quantitative Methods
Quantitative Approach
First, our assessment will utilize a cross-sectional approach because our data will be
collected at a single point in time (Henning & Roberts, 2017). As previously stated, the Pre-
Health Professions office recommends a cross-sectional approach for assessment of their

program; therefore, our data will be obtained from students near the end of a full PHPAC cycle,
which is about two years prior to entry into health professional schools and at the beginning of
students’ junior year at Loyola.. Using this approach will allow us to collect a large amount of
data in a very short period of time. Additionally, collecting the data near the end of the PHPAC
cycle ensures that students will have experienced or participated in most or all of the program’s
processes from which we are assessing their learning. The quantitative design we will use for
our assessment will be a correlational design. A correlational design seeks relationships between
two or more variables through data collected (Henning & Roberts, 2017). This is pertinent to our
assessment because we are assessing both process-related elements of the program and the
program’s medium-term student learning outcomes to understand how the former relates the
latter. For example, in the Professional School Admission section of the survey map (Appendix
C), we ask specifically about the mock admission interview process. In one question, we ask
students to rate the quality of help they received as a result of participating in a mock interview
with an advisor. In another question, we ask them to rate their confidence level in their
admission interview skills. The first question is assessing a process-related element, and the
second question is assessing a student learning element. We would seek to find a correlation
between responses to these two questions to understand how the first relates to the second.
Our quantitative approach will assess the level of achievement of the student learning
outcomes and will help us find correlations between how program activities and interventions
affect student learning. Positive correlation between these two categories can indicate that the
pre-health advisee’s ability to demonstrate the medium-term outcomes (Appendix A) are at least
related to the pre-health Office’s activities in which they participated. A negative correlation
could imply that certain processes have an inverse relationship to the achievement of the
medium-term outcomes. Additionally, our approach will help us understand any similarities or
differences in data of students with certain majors, first-generation students, students of certain
ethnic or racial groups, gender identities, and students whose family background includes
members in the healthcare field. Our quantitative approach will also assist in the summative
nature of our assessment by assessing the Office of Pre-Health Professions’ processes to
understand how and if they relate to the student learning outcomes, which is important in
justifying the program’s existing resources and structure.
The specific population we will be studying are the fourth year undergraduate advisees of
the Pre-Health Professions Office. Our sampling strategy will be nonrandom because we are
interested in a specific set of students within the greater Loyola student population (Henning &
Roberts, 2017). The sample of pre-health advisees we will use for our assessment will be
obtained through convenience sampling, as our survey will be sent to this entire subset of Loyola
students and all respondents’ data will be analyzed. A comparison group of students will not be
used to study the sample of our assessment because the selection of students we are assessing are
only ones that have participated in the processes and activities provided by the Pre-Health
Professions Office. There is no need to compare the pre-health advisee student group to another
similar group. Rather, as stated in the assessment questions, student data will be analyzed to
determine if student learning outcomes are fulfilled differently across a variety of student groups.
Survey Instrument
The assessment survey consists of seven sections as outlined in the survey map
(Appendix C). Two of the survey sections consist of questions regarding general information
about the Pre-Health Professions Office. The general information questions at the beginning of
the survey are warm-up question that inquire about general, overarching processes of the Pre-
Health Professions Office. The section near the end consists of open-ended questions regarding
any perceived deficiencies about student admission interviewing and personal statement
writing. Four sections in the middle ask questions pertaining to each outcome category of career
exploration, academic planning, experiential learning, and professional school admission
outlined in the logic model (Appendix A). The very last section of the survey map inquires
about student demographic data. In total, the survey consists of 53 items and would take
approximately ten minutes to complete.
We will be pilot testing our survey before administering it in order to receive feedback
about the clarity, order, and wording of our survey questions as well as the overall length of the
survey (Henning & Roberts, 2017). We will follow Dillman’s four steps in the pilot testing
process to administer our survey (Henning & Roberts, 2017). First, we will ask our classmates
to review our completed survey to identify any problems or inconsistencies that we would need
to address. Next, we will employ random sampling to obtain a group of former pre-health
advisee students from Loyola’s greater population on whom the survey would be tested. These
students will be a good sample to test first because they are similar to our target sample for
assessment and are familiar with the processes and pre-health parlance. The pilot survey will
also have additional items asking the former pre-health students about the clarity, length, and
flow of the survey. An open-ended item asking them to provide general feedback or
recommendations on the survey will be added as well. The pilot survey would be administered
online, but in person if possible, so we can ask the participants clarifying questions at the same
point-in-time if needed. Participants who are unable to complete the survey in-person will be
sent it via email and follow up questions would need to be ask via email correspondence as
well. Not only would this pilot survey give us important feedback on clarity and language used
in the survey, but we can also check the data we collect from them for any irregularities
(Henning & Roberts, 2017). Lastly, Dillman (Henning & Roberts, 2017) suggests one final,
overall review which both of us will do after the pilot test is administered.
The assessment survey will be administered online to our sample so we can reach as
many participants as possible in a cost effective way. Potential participants will receive an
outreach email (Appendix E) with a link to the online survey. After the initial survey email, two
weekly survey reminders (Appendix E) will be sent to potential participants. This period of
time, later in the semester, corresponds with heavier course content loads for students, and these
two weekly reminders should suffice in keeping visibility of the survey to potential participants.
In order to prevent irritation with the survey conductors down to a minimum, an unsubscribe
option will be offered in each email for students to opt-out of further survey reminders. The
survey will be administered via an online survey tool in order to minimize cost and personnel
hours, streamline the survey process, and automate data input. In order to keep costs down, an
incentive will not be used. We feel that since most of the pre-health advisees still need to remain
in contact with the Pre-Health Professions Office since their committee letter has not yet been
sent to them, the fact that the office is asking them to participate in the survey is incentive
enough.
Quantitative Analytic Plan
Our assessment will use both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics
will be used to organize and summarize the data collected from the sample of pre-health advisees
and assist in describing the advisees overall (Henning & Roberts, 2017). We seek to describe the
sample’s key demographics, students’ achievement of the program learning outcomes, and
various aspects related to the program’s activities. To assess the student advisee learning
outcomes, we must first know in which program activities they participated, and, in some cases,
how often. Frequencies will be used to describe the distribution of responses for each survey
item (e.g., the extent to which students felt they achieved a particular learning outcome or the
extent to which a particular program element was emphasized during advising). Cross-
tabulations will also be used to compare answers between student groupings by major (Henning
& Roberts, 2017). Measures of central tendency will also be used in our assessment. This will
be useful in boiling down entire sets of data into one or just a few numbers (Henning & Roberts,
2017). The means of student answers will be computed to determine the averages of how
students are responding to certain survey items. This will be useful in comparing student
answers by major and summarizing the entire sample’s answers as a whole.
Inferential statistics will be used to draw conclusions about pre-health advisees and apply
to future advisees through our correlation analyses. As previously stated, our assessment is
correlational, so we will be calculating several correlation coefficients to understand the linear
relationship between some of our survey items (Henning & Roberts, 2017). We realize not every
pre-health student emailed the survey will participate, so during our analysis, we will denote the
actual respondents of the survey with “N” to differentiate them from the entire pre-health student
population (Henning & Roberts, 2017). In addition to performing correlation analyses, we will
perform an independent-samples t test by calculating two groups’ means and determining any
statistically significant difference between them (Davidson, 2017). For example, we can
compare statistically significant differences in survey item responses between science majors and
non-science majors. We would compare these two groups to determine if learning outcomes are
achieved significantly higher or lower by one group or the other. This could also tell us whether
science and non-science majors experience the same processes of the Pre-Health Professions
Office differently. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) will be used to measure the difference of
the mean responses of more than two demographic groups (Henning & Roberts, 2017). For
example, we can determine if there is any statistical significance between the correlation means
of students who identify as Hispanic or Latinx, Black or African American, and White.
As stated previously, one of our assessment’s goals is to determine whether the activities
and processes offered by the Pre-Health Professions Office influence the medium-term student
learning outcomes. For example, we believe that personal statement writing workshops
influence the approach a student takes to constructing a personal statement that describes their
motivation for pursuing a career in medicine. Survey questions have been written in the survey
map (Appendix C) to present a relationship that exists between this process and outcome, and
how the former affects the latter. The use of histograms will be employed to visually represent
the frequencies of responses related to the student learning outcomes. Also, tables will used to
show statistically significant correlations and differences in means of survey items. Tables will
be used to organize the means of each survey items.
Qualitative Methods
Qualitative Approach
We will be utilizing a narrative design approach for our qualitative analysis. A narrative
design relies on the stories, or “narratives”, of the individuals in the study. The intent of a
narrative design is to capture the lived experiences of individuals, and the way individuals make
meaning of those experiences, and explicate these stories into themes that can be translated into
meaningful data (Henning & Roberts, 2016). Because our assessment seeks to understand the
lived experiences of pre-health students’ interactions with the Pre-Health Professions Office, a
narrative approach is the most preferable design for our qualitative analysis. For our narrative
approach, we will be utilizing focus groups. The decision to use focus groups is due to the size
of the target population, which numbers approximately 200 students, making a focus group
approach faster and more manageable than scheduling a large number of semi-structured
interviews. This will allow for faster data collection with less expense. The open format of
focus groups, additionally, results in a large amount of rich data and provides an opportunity for
participants to build responses off of each other (Henning & Roberts, 2016). Focus groups are
also appropriate for program evaluation (Krueger & Casey, 2010), which is central to the
summative nature of this assessment. The use of focus groups is also practical as the information
shared during these groups should not be deeply personal or sensitive in nature.
Focus groups will provide valuable information relating to our three assessment
questions. Our first assessment question seeks to understand how participation in Pre-Health
Professions Office advising affects the achievement of the program’s medium-term outcomes, as
defined by the logic model (Appendix A). By dividing focus groups into those who have had
advisor interactions versus those who did not have advisor interactions during their
undergraduate career as a pre-health student, we will be able to gain greater insight on the impact
of Pre-Health Professions Office advising on these outcomes. Our second assessment question
explores how the processes of the Pre-Health Professions Office promotes or hinders
achievement of medium-term outcomes. While the focus groups will be categorized by advisor
interaction, participants in both groups may have been involved in other Pre-Health Professions
Office programs, such as workshops or mock interviews, and the qualitative data gained from
these groups may assist us in understanding how these processes affect these outcomes. Through
the use of the demographic variable form (Appendix G), we will be able to classify qualitative
data from these focus groups by academic major, which will assist us in answering our third
assessment question, which seeks to analyze how students of different academic majors achieved
(or did not achieve) the medium-term outcomes.
Participant Selection
The selection of participants for focus groups will be based on their responses to our
survey. There are two questions in particular that will determine how participants are selected
for focus group participation, and how participants will be placed into specific focus groups. On
question 52 of the survey (Appendix D), respondents were asked if they would be interested in
participating in a focus group. This will give us a pool of survey respondents who are willing to
be a focus group participant and their contact information, which will make the process of
potential participant outreach faster and easier. On question number three of the survey
(Appendix D), which asks for respondents to identify how many advising interactions they had
with their pre-health advisor, respondents who indicated that they had zero advising interactions
will be partnered into one focus group set, along with a separate focus group set for pre-health
students who indicated that they had one or more advising interactions. The separation of these
focus group populations will help to determine the effect of advisor interactions on the various
outcomes of the assessment, using the group of pre-health advisees who had zero advisor
interactions as a sort of “control group”. For the pre-health students who had no advisor
interactions, the focus group protocol includes questions that are structured in a way to determine
what methods or resources were utilized to achieve the medium-term outcomes without the
assistance of pre-health advising. In addition to this, the focus group protocol contains questions
that will address some of the Pre-Health Professions Office processes, such as the mock
interviews and workshops, which were part of the survey focus.

After the survey has been completed and data have been analyzed, all survey participants
who indicated a willingness to participate in a focus group will be contacted at the email address
they provided in the survey with a reminder that they were interested in focus group
participation. This outreach email (Appendix E) will then invite them to participate in a focus
group, and ask them to contact the assessment team and indicate if they are still interested in
participation. Email invitations for focus groups will be sent out in late November, with two
weekly reminder emails (Appendix E) sent over December. If a potential participant accepts this
invitation, an acceptance email (Appendix E) will then be sent to the participant with the date,
time, and location of the focus group of which they have been selected to be a part.
Focus Group Protocol Instrument
The qualitative instrument for our focus group interviews will be a focus group protocol
(Appendix H). The series of questions used in this instrument will provide consistency between
each focus group so that answers can be compared and contrasted between the different groups.
Focus group questions will be sequenced to allow for a natural flow from one question to the
next, and structured to cover all of the medium-term outcomes being assessed in the study. Each
of the medium-term outcomes being assessed, as defined in the logic model (Appendix A), have
two to three questions in the focus group protocol, with at least one probe for each question.
With the inclusion of introductory questions and final questions about the program in general,
the focus group protocol has seventeen questions in total. The anticipated length of the focus
group is approximately two hours. While it is impossible to know the exact number of students
who will be interested in focus group participation, we intend to pilot test the focus group
questions if there is a larger number of willing participants. Breen (2007) concludes that utilizing
a pilot focus group is essential for obtaining feedback on focus group questions, and can provide
insight into how the focus group questions are interpreted by the participants. Breen (2007) also
argues that a pilot focus group can also help revise question structure, alter questions that may be
confusing, include additional questions that may be relevant, or remove questions that are not
necessary. If the sample size is small, Breen (2007) suggests that modifications to the focus
group can be made to obtain some of the benefits of a pilot study. Breen (2007) suggests that
extending the length of a focus group, and asking participants to give feedback on questions, is a
potential option. Another potential option is to send the focus group participants the questions in
advance, so that confusing questions can be revised or clarification can be provided.
Focus Group Implementation
The lead for the focus groups will be Frank Inglima, who will be asking the questions and
leading the focus groups. Krueger & Casey (2010) recommend that the lead moderator for focus
groups should have the most knowledge and experience with the topic to better understand the
responses to questions, have a working knowledge of any technical language that is esoteric to a
particular group, and understand what participants are trying to say. As Frank has previous
experience working with the Pre-Health Professions Office, he is the best choice as lead for the
focus groups. Greg Grenard will be the assistant moderator, and will be responsible for taking
notes, monitoring the audio recording of each group session, and summarizing discussions at the
end of the focus groups. Because the survey will be administered in November, and emails to
potential focus group participants will be sent out in December, this period of time corresponds
with final exams for students, so running the actual focus groups during this time is impractical
and will likely result in little to no participation from students. As a result, the focus groups will
be held in January of the next year, after students have returned from winter break and have
begun classes in the spring semester. This choice of time will give the assessment team ample
time to review qualitative data for any significant differences between the two groups. The
execution of focus groups in January will also ensure that students are physically present in the
area to participate in the groups, that their course content loads in school are not as heavy, and
that they are not close to taking final exams.
Henning & Roberts (2016) recommend that a focus group location be quiet, private, and
conducive to conversation. It is further recommended that a lounge-style setup, rather than a
classroom or table configuration, is implemented for a comfortable, casual atmosphere. Loyola
offers several areas on campus that meet these criteria, and the choice for our focus group
location is the Mundelein Greenhouse (Appendix I). Located on the seventh floor of the
Mundelein Center on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus, the Mundelein Greenhouse is a reservable
space for up to twenty-five people and is filled with several couches that can be rearranged to fit
into a circle, allowing for a relaxed setting that fosters conversation. Because the focus groups
will take place during the semester, scheduling the time of the focus groups to minimize conflicts
with participants’ classes is critical. Using the Loyola University Chicago course scheduling grid
(Office of Registration and Records, 2017), all classes that are not designated as evening courses
are finished by 3:45 p.m. on weekdays. Thus, the scheduled time of the focus groups will take
place at 4:30 p.m. to allow students enough time to get from classes to the focus group
location. Focus group days will also take place during the middle of the week (Tuesdays through
Thursdays). Billups (2012) contends that conducting focus groups with college students during
the middle of the week is most favorable, as these days are optimal for securing their
participation and attention. Further, Billups (2012) recommends that focus groups for college
students be scheduled in the early evening and around meal times, provided food is offered, as
this method works well for increasing participant involvement and engagement. To provide an
incentive for participation in these focus groups, then, food and beverages will be provided as the
focus group time is roughly around dinner time. In order to keep the cost of focus groups down,
individual incentives will not be provided; only food and beverages will be offered in exchange
for participation. While each focus group session length will differ, Billups (2012) states that
typical focus group sessions are 90-120 minutes in length. We anticipate our focus group
sessions will take approximately two hours, depending on the level of participant engagement,
which fits into Billups’ determination of appropriate length. Krueger and Casey (2010) suggest
that audio recording of focus group discussions is vital to capturing all of the group dialogue, so
audio recording will be utilized for our focus groups. The assistant moderator will be
responsible for bringing digital audio recorders to each focus group, managing the recordings,
and taking notes during the group discussions to ensure the quality of the analysis.
As recommended by Krueger & Casey (2010), the focus group sessions will begin with a
short introduction to welcome the participants, give an overview of the topic, and provide ground
rules for the discussion. The participants will be given a short briefing on informed consent
before signing the informed consent waiver (Appendix F) and completing the demographic
variable form (Appendix G), followed by an acknowledgement that the focus group sessions will
be recorded with an audio recorder and that notes will be taken by the assistant moderator. The
participants will then be briefed on the purpose and intent of the focus group. Next, the focus
groups will start with an introductory question to get the participants more at ease and
comfortable. Participants will share their names, preferred pronouns, and their academic majors.
After the introductory phase, the focus group protocol will ask a transition question, which
serves as a bridge between the introductory question and the key questions (Henning & Roberts,
2016). The transition question asks participants about the number of advisor interactions they
have had with the Pre-Health Professions Office. This question allows the focus group members
to recognize the similarity of their experience with pre-health advising, noting that they have had
no advisor interactions, or that they have had at least one advisor interaction. After discussion on
the transition question, the moderators will then move into the protocol’s key questions
(Appendix H). The key questions will give participants an opportunity to explain how pre-health
advising connected to program outcomes, or for participants with no advising interactions, what
experiences or resources were utilized to achieve these outcomes. Questions 2 through 10, and
question 14, are specifically directed toward advisor interaction in relation to program outcomes,
or toward alternate resources or paths in achieving those outcomes. Questions 11 through 13 are
intended to look at some of the process-related elements of the Pre-Health Professions Office,
specifically the workshops on personal statements and mock interviews, and the practice
interviews with a pre-health advisor. Finally, the last three questions ask participants to reflect
on their advisor interaction experiences, if they had any, to explain what they would change
about the Pre-Health Professions Office, or to discuss anything else that they would like to add to
the focus group discussion. The focus group is then concluded and participants are thanked for
their time and their thoughts.
Qualitative Analysis
We will utilize attribute coding to sort focus group participants’ answers by their
demographic characteristics (Rogers & Goodrick, 2010). These demographic characteristics will
be collected via a demographic variable form and will include categories such as first- or
continuing- generation college student, family healthcare background, gender, racial/ethnic
heritage, and college major separated by science and non-science (Appendix G). We are asking
for these demographic variables because they are for exploratory purposes. We are not
necessarily theorizing that students of different demographic categories’ learning occurs
differently within the Pre Health Professions Office’s processes, but this will help us to see if
significantly different findings emerge across these categories.
Descriptive coding will be utilized to identify themes relating to a particular issue from
our focus groups (Rogers & Goodrick, 2010). Due to the summative nature of our assessment,
our descriptive coding approach will be deductive rather than inductive. We are justifying the
processes the Pre-Health Professions Office utilize as they themselves have strong data to
suggest that their pre-health advisees have a high success rate of admission to their chosen
professional schools. We theorize that the office’s processes aid in this strong admission rate
and our assessment seeks to give this deeper meaning. We will first code the data by looking for
information in the focus group transcripts that particularly pertain to the Pre-Health Professions
Office’s medium-term outcomes (Appendix A). Since the order of our focus group questions do
not depend on earlier question responses, we plan on coding in a parallel manner (Rogers &
Goodrick, 2010). In other words, it would make more sense for us to code responses question by
question of all participants rather than participant by participant.
Pattern coding will be used to identify relationships between participant responses within
a particular demographic category as well as across all the demographic categories (Rogers &
Goodrick, 2010). This will help us interpret the data we have already descriptively coded. For
example, if many first-generation students who participated in the focus groups kept reporting
that admission requirements to their professional school of choice were not explicitly
communicated enough by their advisor, pattern coding would help us identify this pattern or
trend.
We will use a construct map to develop the coding scheme for our assessment. Since our
focus group questions were developed using the four learning outcome categories of the
assessment (Appendix A), those four categories will serve as the predetermined constructs for
our construct map and will branch off into different finding categories from there. We will start
by creating a table within a spreadsheet consisting the four categories (career discernment,
academic planning, experiential learning, and professional school admission) at the top of the
table to form columns. Under these categories, we will list codes from responses of questions
asked in the focus group. Using these four categories to guide our construct map and questions
help us keep focus on the office’s learning outcomes and processes (Rogers & Goodrick,
2010). We plan to use word repetition when combing through transcripts to identify certain
words or phrases that we notice are being used frequently (Davidson, 2017). If we notice the
phrase, “writing center” coming up often through our review of the focus group transcripts, we
can analyze further why we are seeing this phrase so frequently. Perhaps it means the
participants found that the majority of their personal statement writing skills were attributed to
the writing center at Loyola and not so much the personal statement writing workshops. Or
perhaps that is because their advisors encouraged them to seek out extra help at the writing
center. Word repetition would help us notice frequently mentioned words or phrases like this so
we can investigate the meaning further. We will also employ the cutting and sorting technique
by reading through our transcripts and picking out phrases and quotes that we think are
important (Davidson, 2017). For example, if we are noticing a lot of negative adjectives
associated with or next to a phrase or word that describes one of the office’s activities (like mock
interviews), we would cut out and sort those portions all into one group and assign it a code. We
would also employ member checks after the participants’ data had been transcribed. Participants
would be sent our transcription of their portion of the focus group conversation so they can check
our accuracy of what was said (Henning & Roberts, 2016). In addition to focus group
participants, colleagues will also be consulted to check if data are being interpreted correctly. If
we notice from the data that many participants had negative experiences with locating an
internship opportunity, we may interpret that as they were not given enough guidance by their
pre-health advisor if that is not explicitly discussed via questions and probes. Participants and
colleagues can inform us of other possible reasons why there was this difficulty when we share
out interpretation with them.
Once we actually start interpreting data, we will test for inter-rater reliability by both of
us going through the transcript data separately to compare our coding to understand the
similarities and difference of our interpretations (Davidson, 2017). We want to ensure that we
have a high degree of similarity in interpreting the data, and if not, investigate further as to why
our interpretations are so dissimilar.
Triangulation will be inherently used in the form of multiple investigators (Henning &
Roberts, 2016). Both Greg and Frank will analyze data from the focus groups separately and
compare their conclusions to look for similarities and differences. Similar interpretations of the
data between the two investigators can confirm findings to a higher degree (Henning & Roberts,
2016). Another method of triangulation that will be used in our assessment is mixed methods
(Henning & Roberts, 2016). As explained earlier, the assessment includes a quantitative
component of an online survey and a qualitative component of holding focus groups. Data
yielded from both methods will be compared to check for consistencies and inconsistencies. For
example, the focus group protocol (Appendix H) asks, “Did your pre-health advisor(s) assist you
in locating one or more internship opportunities?” The online survey asks several questions
about students’ experiences locating internship opportunities in items 26 to 32 of the survey map
(Appendix C). We can cross-check these two data collection methods for consistencies of
responses from each participant.
Presentation of Qualitative Data
We will present our qualitative results in a table similar to our construct map where the
four outcome categories will guide as a template. Frequent codes and standout direct quotes will
be used under each column pertaining to the categories. We understand that some direct quotes,
while impactful, can be controversial in the way they are worded, so we will paraphrase direct
quotes where appropriate (Rogers & Goodrick, 2010). We will also take care to omit or reframe
and quotes where one can identify the source (Rogers & Goodrick, 2010).
Assessment Limitations
There are several limitations to our quantitative approach. Not all survey participants
will have participated in all program activities, which might result in more answers and data for
certain survey items, which weight results differently. Additionally, in our correlational
assessment, we can determine if two survey items have negative or positive correlation, but we
cannot determine causation. The administered survey is a useful tool in helping us discover if
students have met the learning outcomes (Appendix A) and correlations help to determine if
there is a relationship between process-related elements and student learning outcomes, but these
are unable to capture or explain exactly why and how a student learning outcome has been
met. For example, a positive correlation may be found with a student attending a personal
statement workshop and the high confidence a student reports in their ability to write a personal
statement. But perhaps the student received help in learning new writing techniques from their
English professor and this was the biggest reason for their high confidence in personal statement
writing. This underlying variable would not be captured through our survey. A qualitative
approach using a focus group can be of use in giving meaning to data like in the previous
example so we can have a better understanding of other factors other factors that relate to the
positive or negative achievement of the learning outcomes.
There are also limitations to our proposed qualitative assessment. Since our time for
focus groups is limited to 90-120 minutes, we may not be able to explore some subjects or
responses as in-depth as we would like, but follow-up emails and phone calls during our member
checks may provide more depth to responses later. Additionally, while we will explicitly state
that focus group participant responses and all that is discussed during the focus group will be
kept in the strictest of confidence, we realize that some participants still may not be completely
truthful or may withhold information regarding their experiences to be perceived in a certain way
by the assessors and their peers. A way to partially counteract this is to have comment cards at
the end asking participants to write if there was anything they would have liked to discuss in the
group but could not, whether due to level of comfort or limited time spent on a particular
subject. Additionally, this would be the very first assessment the Pre-Health Professions Office
has ever done. As such, there is no previous assessment data off of which to build or
reference. This can only be addressed by assessing the office’s services and learning outcomes
additional times after the first that we are proposing. It is also important to acknowledge our
biases as limitations of our assessment. Henning and Roberts (2016) explain that it is very
important to embrace assessors’ biases in qualitative design. We must be explicit about the
biases that we as instruments of analyses hold (Henning & Roberts, 2016). Since our assessment
is summative and seeks to prove, justify, and explain that the activities of the Pre-Health
Professions Office are successful, we are biased toward the activities positively contributing to
the students’ learning outcomes (Appendix A). The fact that we may assume the office’s
activities are the biggest factor in positively contributing to the learning outcomes must be
explained in our results reporting. Additionally, the assessors share many of the same identities,
including racial, gender, and sexual orientation identities. We must keep this in mind when we
are interpreting and evaluating our data.
Budget
One of the goals of the administration our entire assessment is to be as cost-effective as
possible. For the quantitative survey portion of the assessment, we are using the free web-
service, SurveyMonkey, to administer the survey. Our focus group administration will utilize
resources that already exist and are available to us from the Pre-Health Professions Office. Note
recording materials such as pencils and sheets of paper are available free of charge as well as the
printing of the consent forms. Loyola University Chicago provides audio recording devices and
microphones for free rental through the Digital Media Services office, and Greg will reserve
these materials for use in the focus group. Loyola also provides their academic spaces available
to rent at no cost, so we will take advantage of that when we reserve the Mundelein Greenhouse
for the focus group. As previously mentioned, food and beverages will be offered as an
incentive to focus group participants at an estimated cost of $300.
We do not expect to incur any charges for the data analyses we are conducting. We will
be using the SPSS analytic software that is installed on Loyola lab computers for analyzing data
collected from the survey. Greg and Frank will be coding and interpreting the data from the
focus group themselves, so no others need compensation. Printed reports of the assessment
results will produced using the Pre-Health Profession Office’s resources as well. Electronic
briefings of results will be sent to students via email at no cost as well. We estimate the overall
budget of the assessment at $300, with focus group food and beverage being the only item of
cost.
Timeline and Next Steps
The entire process of our assessment to start in October of 2018. We expect to have the
survey pilot tested with corrections made by the end of the second week in October, which is
Friday, the 12th. The actual assessment survey will be emailed to students on November 3rd,
with two weekly reminder emails sent on the 8th and the 15th. The survey analysis will be
conducted during the week of November 26th, giving students who received the second reminder
email to complete the survey over Thanksgiving break. During December, after Loyola’s final
exam period has concluded, the focus group will be pilot tested with corrections made to the
protocol the week of the 17th. We will reserve our meeting space for the focus group as Loyola
staff comes back from break around the 2nd or 3rd of January, 2019. The two focus groups will
be held on the Saturdays of 12th and the 19th to accommodate maximum availability for the
participants. Since the coding and analyzing of the qualitative data are being done solely by
Greg and Frank and parts will rely on others input (like member checks and consultation of
colleagues), we will give ourselves the entire month of February to complete it. The month of
March will be dedicated to the preparation and distribution of our assessment reports.
Based on the results of our summative assessment, the Pre-Health Professions Office will be
able to decide if a formative assessment would be useful for their office. For example, if they
feel the data reflected in the summative report suggests that processes could be improved, or if
particular outcomes are not being met, a formative assessment could provide suggestions for
process improvement purposes. If desired, this formative assessment would take place in
October of the following year when the office would be assessing a new group of students.
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Appendix A- Logic Model
INPUT
OUTPUTS OUTCOMES + IMPACT
SITUATIO
S
N Short-term
Participati Medium-term Long-term
Activities (Learning/
(Action) (Conditions)
on Awareness)
What is the What we What we do: Who we reach: What are the short- term What are the medium- What is the ultimate
issue or need invest (i.e., Career Pre-Health results? (immediate term results? impact?
driving the people, Discernment/Explorati students results upon initial (2-3 years) (5+ years)
assessment? knowledge, on: It is estimated that advising) Career Career
-The Pre-Health resources, -Advisor career counseling one third to one Career Discernment/Explorati Discernment/Explorati
office is materials): -Partnership with parent half of incoming Discernment/Explorati on: on:
consistently -Financial office (Career Development freshman self- on: -Choose a specific
evaluated on their resources report as pre- -Attain education to
Center) for resources and -Identify career career path based on secure employment in
use of resources -Dedicated health. These
information on career fields interests career interests, chosen career path
versus their Pre-Health numbers drop
program’s
and information resources
-Demonstrate where to academic plan, and
staff: to assist in gaining significantly as
clinical experience Academic
effectiveness. (1 associate students progress locate information on
Assessment will director, 2
knowledge of varied health
through science various healthcare -Explain the required Planning:
professional careers
be used to justify pre-health courses and meet careers preparation for a career -Fulfill all prerequisite
the program’s -Career fairs, which can in selected area
advisors, 1 with academic -Evaluate different coursework for medical
produce internship or
financial and graduate advisors to healthcare careers and Academic Planning: school admission
personnel needs. assistant, and clinical experience determine if a
opportunities compare how they align -Follow academic plan -Complete
1 admin career in medicine
assistant) with personal interests as designed baccalaureate degree
-Additional resources is right for them.
Who is and professional goals for admission eligibility
- available- college Each year, -Evaluate academic
affected by Supplementar major/career matching, approximately Academic Planning: plan for errors and Experiential Learning:
y advisors resume construction, 300 work with advisors to -Enter program with
the issue? -Articulate required
and staff; the recruitment information- undergraduate reorganize academic
courses for medical clinical experience that
-The Pre-Health Pre-Health through links on the Pre- juniors, seniors, school admission progression and content supports career choice
office staff Advisory Health office and Career and post-
-Differentiate if needed Prof/Grad School
-The students the Committee Development Center baccalaureate
hires several website students are requirements for -Complete the Medical Admission:
office serves
additional accepted into the academic major and College Admissions Test
-University Academic Planning: -Complete American
advisors and Pre-Health pre-medical (MCAT)
administrators Medical College
staff (the -Advisor academic Advisory requirements Experiential Learning:
responsible for number counseling, which Application Service
Committee -Develop an academic
funding the varies from -Connect career AMCAS) application
assists students in program. These plan that meets both
program year to year) students are interests with a specific -Identify medical
developing academic major requirements and
-Academic from multiple primarily biology internship/clinical schools likely to admit
plans to meet major medical school experience
advisors and disciplines to and science-based based on personal
Career requirements and admission requirements
handle the majors, but -Complete the required qualifications and
Development number of Experiential Learning:
students can be number of clinical
Center staff who students in medical school from any major -Articulate the clinical experience hours for submit admission
would be the admission requirements. provided they experience admission eligibility applications
responsible for committee meet a specific set requirements for Prof/Grad School -Communicate specific
-Academic planning is
career process of requirements: medical school Admission: personal academic
development -Advisory used to sequence courses  Cumulative admission qualifications to an
services in the committee in optimized ways to and science -Articulate qualifications
-Demonstrate where admission board
absence of the members are best prepare students for GPA as a strong candidate
clinical internships or interview
Pre-Health office offered taking tests such as the requirement for medical school
training other experiential
Medical College of 3.20 admission boards
classes on opportunities can be
Admission Test  Minimum through mock
Who is medical located
(MCAT) 50 hours of interviews with Pre-
interested in school Prof/Grad School
clinical Health office advisors
admission Experiential Learning: Admission:
the issue requirements,
experience -Construct a personal
- Clinical internship (additional -Describe the statement that
(who are the statistics and
counseling, which clinical
data on components of a describes motivation for
stakeholders previous Pre- assists students in experience medical school pursuit of medicine
)? identifying what is necessary admission interview
Health
Advisory internship opportunities for most
-The Pre-Health medical -identify the personal,
office staff Committee align with career goals academic, and
school
-LUC Career years, and professional elements
manuals for
-Connecting students to admissions)
Development internship opportunities  Minimum of an effective personal
advisors and
Center through partnerships 16 credit statement
committee
-The Office of members on with local hospitals and hours of -explain the timeline for
the Provost advising medical centers science the medical school
-The Office of procedures courses application process
the President and career
Prof/Grad School taken at
development Admission: Loyola
resources -Personal statement
workshops
-Best -Workshops on medical
Practices of school admission
National interviews and mock
Organizations
interviews with advisors
, such as the
National for interview practice
Association and experience
of Advisors
for Health
Professions
(NAAHP)
Appendix A- NAAHP Best Practices
(1) Provides appropriate physical space, institutional services, training, and resources for
the pre-health advisor(s) to meet the needs of pre-health students;
(2) Situates the pre-health advising office in a location where it can best serve its entire
population, have adequate authority and administrative support, and contribute to the overall
institutional mission;
(3) Provides advisors fair compensation that aligns with that of peer and benchmark
institutions;
(4) Provides financial resources for pre-health advisors for ongoing professional
development, organizational memberships, travel, subscriptions, and educational materials to
maintain and enhance competence;
(5) Promotes a policy of diversity and inclusion which, in all matters pertaining to
faculty, staff, students, and advisory board and/or pre-health committee, embraces the broad
range of human differences and potential;
(6) Provides resources for the creation and maintenance of an advisory board and/or pre-
health committee, as well as recognition of those who support the pre-health advising program;
(7) Develops a system for maintaining accurate pre-health advising records that meets
FERPA standards;
(8) Provides for a system that identifies and tracks pre-health students, that is accessible
to pre-health advisor(s), and that makes it possible to compile data and analyze statistics about
the pre-health population;
(9) Provides for a website offering information for prospective and current students and
alumni;
(10) Establishes, in collaboration with the pre-health advisor(s), a plan for assessing the
pre-health advising program and its student learning outcomes;
(11) Benchmarks the pre-health program, its practices, and its advisor training process
with those in similarly-structured institutions;
(12) Encourages its alumni office to foster engagement and networking between alumni,
the pre-health advisor(s), and current pre-health students.

Appendix C- Survey Map
Pre-Health Professions Office Survey Map
Logic Model Outcome Survey Survey Item Response Response Options

Component Item # Type
General Pre-Health N/A 1 How did you hear about the Pre-Health Professions Radio button: Email
Professions Office Office? Nominal Flyer
Information (Categorical) Faculty member
Fellow student
LUC webpage
Other(Please specify)
N/A 2 When contacting the pre-health advisors via email, Radio button: Strongly Disagree
they responded in a timely manner. Ordinal Disagree
Likert scale Agree
Strongly Agree
N/A
N/A 3 During your time at Loyola University Chicago, you Radio button:
have probably discussed the following with various Ordinal Survey Table
individuals on campus. How many times did you talk Frequency
with a Pre-Health advisor about the following:
0 1 2 3 More Than 3
Career Exploration
Academic Planning
Clinical Experience Opportunities

Professional School Admission
1. Career Discernment
Pre-Health students MTOC 1 4 Before talking to a Pre-Health advisor, how certain Radio button: Completely Uncertain
must choose a specific were you about pursuing a career in a health Ordinal Somewhat Uncertain
career path based on profession? Likert scale Completely Certain
career interests
MTOC 1 5 Before talking to a Pre-Health advisor, how certain Radio button: Completely Uncertain
were you of the specific career you wanted to pursue Ordinal Somewhat Uncertain
in the health profession? Likert Scale Completely Certain
MTOC 1 6 How much did a Pre-Health advisor help you learn Radio button: Not at All
about different career paths? Ordinal Very Little
Likert Scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 7 In talking with a Pre-Health advisor, I learned about Radio button: Not at All
career paths in health care that I was previously Ordinal Very Little
unfamiliar with. Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 8 How much did a Pre-Health advisor help you explore Radio button: Not at All
different career paths based on your interests? Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 9 How much did a Pre-Health advisor help you to Radio button: Not at All
connect your interests to a specific career choice? Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 10 How much did a Pre-Health advisor help you choose Radio button: Not at All
an academic major that aligned with your career Ordinal Very Little
interests? Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 11 How did you learn about different careers in the Radio button: Pre-Health advisor
healthcare field (check all that apply)? Nominal Other academic advisor
(Categorical) Career Development
Center
Loyola Career Fairs
Other(please specify)
MTOC 1 12 What is the healthcare career you have chosen? Radio button: Medical Doctor/Doctor
Nominal of Osteopathy
(Categorical) Pharmacy
Dental
Physician’s Assistant
Physical Therapy
Occupational Therapy
Optometry
Podiatry
Veterinary
Other: please specify
must explain the were you of the academic requirements for Ordinal Somewhat Uncertain
required preparation admission into your chosen health professional Likert scale Completely Certain
for a career in a school?
selected area.
MTOC 2 14 How much did a Pre-Health advisor help you Radio button: Not at All
understand the academic requirements for Ordinal Very Little
admission into your chosen health professional Likert scale Some
school? Quite a Bit
understand the academic coursework required Ordinal Very Little
during the graduate/professional school training for Likert scale Some
your chosen healthcare career? Quite a Bit
understand the additional requirements (such as Ordinal Very Little
specialized training, licensure, or residency Likert scale Some
requirements) for your chosen healthcare career? Quite a Bit
MTOC 2 17 I have used the following services to better Radio button: Pre-Health advisor
understand the requirements for admission into the Nominal Other academic advisor
health professional school of my choice (check all (Categorical) LUC Mentors program
that apply). Career Fairs
Professional Association
Website
Student Organization
2. Academic Planning
must follow their were you of how to plan your undergraduate courses Ordinal Somewhat Uncertain
designed academic plan in order to be admitted into the health professional Likert scale Completely Certain
to align with medical school of your choice?
professional school
requirements and
professional school
admissions tests
MTOC 1 19 A Pre-Health advisor helped me set up the sequence Radio button: Yes
of courses I took to complete my health professional Nominal No
school prerequisites. (Categorical)
MTOC 1 20 How much did a Pre-Health advisor help you stay on Radio button: Not at All
track to follow the sequence of courses in your Ordinal Very Little
academic plan? Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
Pre-Health students MTOC 2 21 Did you make any changes to your academic plan (for Radio button: Yes
must evaluate academic reasons such as failing classes, withdrawing from Nominal No
plan for errors and work classes, errors in course progression, or other (Categorical)
with advisors to reasons)?
reorganize academic
progression and MTOC 2 22 How much did a Pre-Health advisor assist you in Radio button: Not at All
content reorganizing your academic plan when you needed Ordinal Very Little
to make changes? Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
Pre-Health students MTOC 3 23 I took the following admission test for the health Radio button: MCAT
must complete the professional school of my choice: Nominal GRE
admission test for their (Categorical) PCAT
chosen health DAT

professional school OAT
Other (Please Specify)
MTOC 3 24 How much did a Pre-Health advisor help you locate Radio button: Not at All
resources to prepare you for your admission test? Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 3 25 I have used the following resources to prepare for Radio button: Pre-Health advisor
the admission test into my chosen health Nominal Other academic advisor
professional school (choose all that apply) (Categorical) LUC Mentors program
Website
3. Experiential Learning
Pre-health students MTOC 1 26 A Pre-Health advisor helped me locate resources to Radio button: Not at All
must connect career find clinical experience opportunities. Ordinal Very Little
interests with a specific Likert scale Some
internship/clinical Quite a Bit
experience
MTOC 1 27 A Pre-Health advisor helped me connect clinical Radio button: Not at All
experience opportunities that matched my career Ordinal Very Little
interests. Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 28 My clinical experience helped me develop a deeper Radio button: Not at All
understanding of my chosen healthcare career. Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 29 I learned new information about my chosen Radio button: Not at All
healthcare field as a result of my clinical experience. Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
Pre-Health students MTOC 2 30 I have fulfilled the clinical experience requirements Radio button: Yes
must complete the for my health professional school. Nominal No
required number of (Categorical)
clinical experience MTOC 2 31 A Pre-Health advisor helped me understand the Radio button: Not at All
hours for admission specific clinical experience requirements for the Ordinal Very Little
eligibility health professional school of my choice. Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 2 32 I have used the following services to better Radio button: Pre-Health advisor
understand the clinical experience requirements for Nominal Other academic advisor
the health professional school of my choice (check all (Categorical) LUC Mentors program
that apply). Career Fairs
Website
4. Professional School Admission
Pre-Health students will MTOC 1 33 I attended the “Health Professional School Interview” Radio button: Yes
be able to identify the workshop. Nominal No
components of a (Categorical)
successful professional
interview and articulate
their qualifications as a MTOC 1 34 Before attending the Health Professional School Radio button: Not at All
candidate. Interview workshop, I could identify the components Ordinal Very Little
of a successful admission interview. Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 35 How much did the Health Professional School Radio button:
Interview workshop help improve the following Ordinal
elements of your admission interview: Likert scale Survey Table
Not at All Very Little Some Quite a Bit

Identifying interview types (traditional, panel,
Multiple Mini Interviews (MMI))
Responding to an invitation
How to schedule an interview
Personal appearance and professional behavior
Describing strengths and weaknesses
Articulating goals
Connecting life experiences to medicine
Demonstrating knowledge of the interviewing
institution (such as curriculum, mission, and
vision)
Discussing issues facing the healthcare field
Learning typical interview questions
Structured problem/ethical dilemma questions
Post-interview protocol
MTOC 1 36 I can identify the components of a successful Radio button: Not at All
admission interview at a medical professional school. Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 37 I participated in a mock admission interview with a Radio button: Yes
Pre-Health advisor. Nominal No
(Categorical)
MTOC 1 38 The mock interview with a Pre-Health advisor helped Radio button: Not at All
me practice my admission interviewing skills. Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 1 39 I feel confident in my admission interview skills. Radio button: Strongly Disagree
Ordinal Disagree
Likert scale Agree
Strongly Agree
Pre-Health students will MTOC 2 40 I attended the Personal Statement Workshop. Radio button: Yes
be able to construct a Nominal No
personal statement that (Categorical)
describes motivation for
pursuit of medicine
MTOC 2 41 How much did the Personal Statement Workshop Radio button:
help improve the following elements of your Ordinal
personal statement: Likert scale Survey Table
Not at All Very Little Some Quite a Bit
Personal statement structure (length,

grammar, target audience of statement)
Unity and coherence of composition
Organizing statement around a central

theme
Decision for choosing the medical profession
Motivation to learn more about medicine
Discussing personal experiences
Discussing hardships and challenges

MTOC 2 42 I can identify the components of an effective Radio button: Strongly Disagree
personal statement for a medical professional school Ordinal Disagree
application. Likert scale Agree
Strongly Agree
MTOC 2 43 How much did a Pre-Health advisor assist you in Radio button: Not at All
writing your personal statement? Ordinal Very Little
Likert scale Some
Quite a Bit
MTOC 2 44 I feel confident in the writing of my personal Radio button: Strongly Disagree
statement for my medical professional school Ordinal Disagree
application. Likert scale Agree
Strongly Agree
General Pre-Health N/A 45 Please tell us more about why you do not feel Open-ended
Office information confident in your admission interview skill:
N/A 46 Please tell us more about why you do not feel Open-ended
confident about writing your personal statement for
your medical professional school application:
Demographic Data N/A 47 Please select your major: Radio button: [List all LUC majors]
Nominal Undeclared major
(Categorical) Not listed (please
specify):
Prefer not to say
N/A 48 I identify as a first-generation student (both of my Radio button: Yes
parents did not attain college degrees): Nominal No
(Categorical) Unsure/I don’t know
N/A 49 I have a family member who has a career in the Radio button: Yes
healthcare field: Nominal No
(Categorical) Unsure/I don’t know
N/A 50 I identify my gender as: Radio button: Woman
Nominal Man
(Categorical) Transwoman
Transman
Genderqueer
Not Listed
Prefer not to say
N/A 51 I identify my racial/ethnic heritage as (select all that Radio button: Black or African
apply): Nominal American
(Categorical) Hispanic or Latinx
Asian
American Indian or
Alaska Native
Middle Eastern or North
African
Native Hawaiian or
Pacific Islander
White
Not listed
Prefer not to say
N/A 52 I would be willing to participate in a focus group: Radio button: Yes
Nominal No
(Categorical)
N/A 53 If you are willing to participate in a focus group, Open-ended
please share your email address for contact
purposes.
Appendix D- Survey
Appendix E- Email Templates

Survey Participant Outreach Email
Dear ___________________(potential participant),
My name is __________________, and I am an evaluator for the Pre-Health Professions Office assessment project. You are receiving
this email because you are a Pre-Health Professions Office advisee, and you have recently completed the Pre-Health Professions
Advisory Committee process. I am pleased to invite you to participate in the Pre-Health Professions Office Assessment Survey. This
assessment seeks to gain a better understanding of your experiences with the Pre-Health Professions Office, and to provide you with
an opportunity to help us improve the office and its programs in the future.
Click on the link below to access the survey or open your Web browser and type (or copy and paste) the following URL into your
browser’s address bar:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PreHealthProfessionsOffice
This survey process will keep your information confidential, and your participation in the survey is entirely voluntary. Plan to set aside
approximately 10 minutes to complete the survey. Please complete and submit your survey no later than __________(survey
deadline).
For any questions regarding the online survey, please contact____________(evaluator) at ____________(evaluator email address).
Thank you for your participation,
__________________(evaluator)
To unsubscribe from these emails, please click the following Link.
Survey Participant Reminder Emails

You were recently invited to participate in the Pre-Health Professions Office Assessment Survey. If you have not had the opportunity
to complete the survey, please do so. We value your experience with the Pre-Health Professions Office, and we want to include your
completed survey prior to the deadline of ___________(survey deadline).
If you have already completed the survey, please ensure you have clicked the submit button at the end of the survey. If you have not
yet completed the survey, please do so by clicking on the link below to access the survey or open your Web browser and type the
following URL into your browser’s address bar:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PreHealthProfessionsOffice
We encourage you to participate in the survey. This is an opportunity to help us understand your experiences with the Pre-Health
Professions Office and improve the program for future Pre-Health students. Your participation is entirely voluntary.
For any questions regarding the online survey, please contact____________(evaluator) at ____________(evaluator email address).
Thank you for your participation,
__________________(evaluator)
Focus Group Participant Outreach Email
Dear ____________ (potential participant),
My name is ______________ and I am an evaluator for the Pre-Health Professions Office Assessment Project. You are
receiving this email because you indicated your interest in participating in a focus group when you filled out our survey. I would like
to invite you to participate in a focus group to help us understand your experience with the Pre-Health Professions Office. Your insight
will help us gain a better understanding of how the office provides resources and assistance to Pre-Health students. We hope to use the
information gathered from your participation to learn more about Pre-Health Professions Office and its interactions with Pre-Health
students. If you are still interested in participating, please email me back by ___________(deadline). I look forward to talking with
you and learning about your experience. Thank you, and have a great day!
Respectfully,
__________________(email signature)

Focus Group Participant Reminder Emails
You were recently invited to participate in a focus group for the Pre-Health Professions Office Assessment Project. We value
your experiences with the Pre-Health Professions Office, and we want to gain a better understanding of how the Pre-Health
Professions Office provides resources and assistance to Pre-Health students. Your participation in a focus group will help us learn
more about how the office addresses the needs of Pre-Health students. If you are still interested in participating, please email me back
by ___________(deadline). I look forward to talking with you and learning about your experience. Thank you, and have a great day!
Respectfully,
__________________(email signature)
To unsubscribe from these emails, please click the following Link
Focus Group Participant Acceptance Email
Dear __________(participant)
Thank you very much for agreeing to participate in a focus group to gather more information about your experience with the
Pre-Health Professions Office! This email serves as your official confirmation for your focus group invitation, which will take place
on _______(date) at _______(time). The interview will take place in _______(location) and will last approximately two hours. As a
reminder, you will have to fill out a consent form before the interview begins. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact
_____________(evaluator name) at ________(email and/or phone #). We look forward to seeing you soon!
Respectfully,
_______________(email signature)
Appendix F- Informed Consent Form

CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN PRE-HEALTH PROFESSIONS OFFICE FOCUS GROUP
Project Title: Pre-Health Professions Office Assessment Project

Interviewer: ________________________________
Introduction:
You are being asked to take part in a focus group to help inform Loyola University Chicago
administrators and other staff members on your experiences with the Pre-Health Professions
Office. You are being asked to participate based on your response to our survey, where you
indicated you were interested in participation in a focus group.
Please read this form carefully and ask any questions you may have before deciding whether to
participate in this focus group.
Purpose:
The purpose of the focus group is to gather information about Pre-Health students’ experiences
with the Pre-Health Professions Office’s programs, activities, and resources.
Procedures:
If you agree to participate in the focus group, you will be asked to respond to a series of
questions that will last for approximately two hours. You are encouraged to respond openly and
honestly to the questions asked of you, although you should only respond to questions when you
feel comfortable doing so.
Risks/Benefits:
There are no known risks involved in participating in this study. Benefits may include
improvements to the Pre-Health Professions Office and a greater understanding of how the office
provides services to Pre-Health students and addresses their needs.
Confidentiality:
Your name will not be associated with your responses in the focus group reports. We will
compile a report of basic themes and share it with you prior to finalizing it. The information
gathered in today’s focus group will only be shared with members of the higher education
faculty.
Voluntary Participation:
Participation in this focus group is voluntary. Even if you decide to participate, you are free to
withdraw from participation at any time without penalty.
Contacts and Questions:

If you have questions about the focus group you can contact _____________ at (email address
and/or phone number).
Statement of Consent:
Your signature below indicates that you have read and understood the information provided
above, have had an opportunity to ask questions, and agree to participate in this focus group.
You will be given a copy of this form to keep for your records.
____________________________________________
Participant’s Signature
Date ____________
____________________________________________
Interviewer’s Signature
Date ______________
Appendix G- Demographic Variable Form

Pre-Health Professions Office- Focus Group Participant Demographics
Demographic information is requested for data analyses purposes only.
Date:______________Time:_______________Place:_______________________________
First-Generation Status: Family Member in Healthcare Field:

__ First-Generation Student __ I have a family member who works in the healthcare
field
__ Not First-Generation Student
__ I do not have a family member who works in the
__ Unsure/I don’t know healthcare field
__ Prefer not to say __ Unsure/I don’t know
__ Prefer not to say
Gender: Racial/Ethnic Heritage:

__ Woman __ American Indian or Alaska Native
__ Man __ Asian
__ Transwoman __ Black or African American
__ Transman __ Hispanic, Latinx, or Spanish origin
__ Genderqueer __ Middle Eastern or North African
__ Not listed: __ Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
___________________
__ White
__ Not listed: __________________________
Academic Major(s): ________________________________________________________

Appendix H- Focus Group Protocol

Focus Group Interview Protocol for the Pre-Health Advisee Experience
Focus Group To evaluate how the Pre-Health Professions Office assists student advisees
Purpose: with professional school preparation.
Focus Group • To learn more about how pre-health advisors and the office’s processes
Topics: help advisees determine their career path
• To assess advice about your academic planning and course sequencing to
fulfill your major and professional school requirements
• To learn more about opportunities for experiential learning that were
presented to you
• To evaluate the assistance you received in applying to your professional
school of choice
Focus Group Script

1. Welcome and Facilitator Introductions
Thank you all for joining us for this focus group. My name is Frank Inglima and I will be
facilitating the discussion today.
2. Framing
We will spend the next two hours or so talking about your experience with services offered by
the Pre-Health Professions Office and your interactions with the Pre-Health Advisors as an
advisee. We would like to hear from all of you throughout our time together. There are no
correct or incorrect answers to the questions we ask. We hope you will be comfortable
responding with honesty and transparency, but you are not required to answer every question.
3. Recording and Consent Forms

The thoughts you share with us today will be recorded by an audio recorder and through note-
taking by my colleague, Greg Grenard. We do this so that we can be sure to accurately capture
your responses. The information you share will be used to make improvements to the Pre-Health
Professions Office. Any information shared here today will not be released to anyone beyond the
Pre-Health Professions Office staff. We ask that each of you agree not to share the information
discussed here today outside this room.
This information and more is included in the consent forms we are passing out now. Please take
a few minutes to review the form and sign if you agree to the terms. We are also passing out a
separate demographic form. Your information will be kept completely confidential by us, the
facilitators. Does anyone have questions before we begin?
4. Purpose and Intent

The purpose the Pre-Health Professions Office is to assist students who are seeking careers in the
healthcare fields. We would like to know about your experiences with the office's services and
interacting with advisors and how those helped you a) choose your career path, b) plan your
courses, c) fulfill your experiential learning requirements and d) apply to your professional
school.
5. Participant Introductions
First, let’s introduce ourselves to each other. Please tell us your name, preferred pronouns (if you
wish to share), and your academic major(s).
6. Questions
Thank you. Now we will move into the discussion portion of the focus group.
General Experience with the Office of Pre-Health Professions
First, we would like to know about your interactions with Pre-Health advisors.
These questions allow us to confirm the experience of advisees by focus group in case attitudes
have changed since the survey was given. It also sets the scene and gets participants thinking
about the interactions they have had before we ask process-specific questions.
Question 1: Roughly with how many advisors have you interacted (phone, video call, email)
since you became a Pre-Health advisee? Roughly how many appointments have you had with
each advisor?
Probe to confirm all group participants have had a similar number of experiences:
Probe: It sounds like each of you have had several interactions with pre-health advisors.
Has anyone had a different experience?
OR
Probe: It sounds like each of you have not had very many advisor interactions. Has
anyone here had a different experience?
Career Discernment
Now we would like to ask some questions about your career choice process.
Question 2: What types of advice, if any, did you receive from your Pre-Health advisor(s) about
your career choice process?
Probe: In what ways was the advice helpful?
Question 3: Did you get any advice on your career choice from someone other than your Pre-
Health advisor(s)?
Probe: Who assisted you and in what ways were they helpful?
Question 4: In addition to Pre-Health advising, what other ways did you learn about your career
path options?
Probe: For what reasons were these helpful?
Question 5: What information about your possible career paths was most helpful?
Probe: For what reasons was this helpful?
Probe: What information do you feel could have been helpful, but you were unaware of at
the time?
Academic Planning
Now we would like to ask some questions about the structuring of your courses throughout your
time as a Pre-Health student.
Question 6: Did your Pre-Health advisor(s) assist you in choosing which courses you would take
in which semesters?
Probe: How, specifically, did they assist you in choosing the right courses?
Probe: What was the most helpful part of this advice you received?
Probe: In what other ways could your pre-health advisor have assisted you that would
have been helpful?
Question 7: What other resources did you use, if any, to assist you in creating your schedule
from semester to semester?
Probe: How did you learn about those resources?
Probe: For what reasons did you find these resources helpful?
Experiential Learning
Now we would like to ask some questions about your experiential learning opportunities.
Question 8: Did your Pre-Health advisor(s) assist you in locating one or more internship
opportunities?
Probe: Please tell me more about how they assisted you in locating your internship?
Question 9: What other methods, if any, did you use to locate a site for an internship or clinical
experience?
Probe: How did these methods assist you? and how were you aware of them?
Question 10: After reflecting on your internship experience, what were the most valuable aspects
of your experience? What aspects were least valuable?
Probe: Which aspects helped prepare you for professional school and your future career?
Professional School Admission

Now we would like to ask some questions about your preparation and knowledge of your
professional school admission.
Question 11: Did you attend a personal statement writing workshop offered by the Pre-Health
Professions Office?
Probe: In what ways was the workshop helpful?
OR
Probe: For those who haven’t attended this, did you seek assistance with this part
elsewhere? If so, where?
Question 12: Did you attend an interview workshop offered by the Pre-Health Professions
Office?
Probe: In what ways was the workshop helpful?
OR
Question 13: Did you attend a mock-interview with a Pre-Health advisor?

Probe: In what ways was the interview helpful?
OR
Question 14: Did your advisor adequately inform you of the admission requirements to your
professional school(s) of choice?
Probe: If not, what other information could have been shared? If yes, what information
was most helpful?
Final Questions
Question 15: After reflecting on your advising experiences, can you describe the most positive
aspects with regards to interactions with your advisor(s)? What aspects about your advisor
interactions need the most improvement?
Probe: For what reasons were these interactions positive or negative?
Question 16: What, if anything, would you change about the services offered by the Pre-Health
Professions Office?
Question 17: Is there anything else you wish to share with us before we wrap up our discussion?
Probe: Is there anything we did not ask you that we should have?
7. Conclusion and Thank You

We appreciate the feedback you shared with us today. We seek to understand your experiences
with the Pre-Health Professions Office better and your feedback helps us improve the services
they offer. Thank you for your participation!
Appendix I- Focus Group Location

Appendix J- PowerPoint Presentation


Facilitating A Calling

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Running Head: FACILITATING A CALLING 1

Facilitating a Calling: An Evaluation of the Loyola’s Pre-Health Professions Office

Greg Grenard and Frank Inglima

Loyola University Chicago

Appendix I: Focus Group Location………………………………………………… 95

Hills, Illinois and Woodstock, Illinois (At a Glance, 2017).

The Pre-Health Professions Office (PHPO) is a division of Loyola’s Career Development

Development Center Quick Facts, n.d.).

The Pre-Health Professions Office, as a division of Loyola’s Career Development Center,

medicine, dental, pharmacy, physician’s assistant, physical therapy, occupational therapy,

administration of the university such as the Vice Provost, Provost, or President.

Loyola, roughly one-third to one-half of incoming freshman self-report as pre-health

offices of the Career Development Center in 2012.

designed to increase students’ chances of a successful admission into health professional

creating a well-rounded application, and connecting students to other university resources.

Connection to Institutional Mission

patients. A large component of this is working in service of disadvantaged populations to bring

strongly considered during the admissions process. This multidisciplinary collaboration in

curriculum in science, technology, engineering, and medical education. Loyola’s fourth

Pre-Health Professions Office directly.

“The mission of the Career Development Center (CDC) is to educate, counsel,

exploration process. We encourage the practices of personal reflection and intensive

transformative process.” (Career Development Center Quick Facts, n.d.).

arts disciplines such as philosophy, ethics, or psychology in addition to science

of advising premedical students on their academic planning and progression through

pedagogical models from memorization of information to a focus on group work, critical

evaluation of medical literature, and application of knowledge from multiple

empathy, effective communication, teamwork, and collaboration toward common goals.

educational programming and nurturing knowledge of the medical profession by exposing

growth, knowledge acquisition and application, and interpersonal development through

intrapersonal development (Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education,

that interview preparation is essential for the success of pre-health students.

choices” (Johnson et al., 2001, p. 25).

However, with consistently changing criteria and components of the standardized

begun to understand that non-cognitive components, such as professionalism, empathy, and

practice (Elam et al, 1996).

challenging experiences outside of students’ comfort zones (Wagoner, 2006). Pre-health

opportunities to foster this development, as well as develop close advisor-student relationships to

the student’s varied qualifications for medical school.

Pursuing a medical profession is a serious commitment and medical schools want to

strongly. Self-authorship is a useful model to help students develop this deeper

(Schulenberg, 2013). Baxter-Magolda (1998) observes that “promoting self-authorship is a

meaning with others” (p. 155).

understanding expectations of medical school candidate qualifications, and an incorporation of

relation to their medical profession calling.

of gaining admission to medical school.

identities are considered” (Jones, 2009).

supporting students’ goals of medical professional school admission.

Program Goals and Logic Model

essential for a well-rounded applicant.

students on the construction of a comprehensive, complete medical school application and

prepare for a medical school admission interview.

to many alternative medical fields, to include physician assistants, dentists, pharmacists,

to taking the MCAT.

program effectiveness and demonstrate resource needs.

staff, resulting in a nonhomogeneous level of training.

entry into college through their bachelor's degree attainment.

admission interviews to be prepared.

process to complete the application process.

Program Assessment Needs

Occasional changes in leadership at the operational and financial decision-making level

changes should be made in the process of mock interviews.

justifying the actual existence of it.