The Power of Engaged Learning

By Daniel P. Smith

For Michigan native Grace Tylutki, Loyola University Chicago’s service-learning requirement and involvement with the greater Chicago area community loomed large in her decision to enroll at Loyola.

And it didn’t take long for Tylutki to feel the impact of the University’s earnest efforts to help students gain real-world experience. During her freshman year Exercise Science 101 service-learning course, Tylutki and her peers developed programs on physical health and nutrition for a local high school’s virtual health fair.

The experience ignited Tylutki’s passion for physical wellness and solidified her decision to major in exercise science at Loyola’s Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health. It also spurred a later digital project designed to help parents, coaches, and athletic directors implement injury prevention protocols for female teen athletes.

“The more I connected with the community, the more service I wanted to do,” Tylutki says.

Whether it’s completing a patient intake project for a hospital administrator, crafting nutritional plans for nursing home residents, or working one-on-one with clients at a start-up fitness center, Engaged Learning opportunities engrained in the Parkinson School curriculum usher students like Tylutki outside of the classroom to enhance their learning, strengthen their skillset, and inform their next steps.

“It’s so valuable for students to work with these organizations, to learn about their mission and values and the realities they face,” says Cynthia Stewart, PhD, director of experiential learning and instructor in the undergraduate Public Health program at the Parkinson School. “It helps students decide a vision for their future.”

Learning beyond the classroom

Engaged learning is central to every student’s academic experience at the Parkinson School.

In fact, Engaged Learning is a requirement for undergraduate students majoring in healthcare administration and exercise science. In addition to completing a service-learning course, students in those two majors must also finish a full semester academic internship during their senior year. In 2022, the Parkinson School also began piloting an elective internship course for students enrolled in the school’s third undergraduate major, public health.

Meanwhile, master’s degree-seeking students in four different academic programs – public health, medical laboratory science, dietetics, and exercise science – all complete practicum hours en route to earning their graduate degrees or certificates. MPH students, for example, must complete 210 hours with a field partner while dietetic students tackle multiple rotations totaling more than 1,000 hours of supervised practice.

Through Engaged Learning, students work on tangible projects while receiving mentorship from a site supervisor or preceptor, gaining transferable skills they can apply in the workforce, if not parlay into full-time employment.

“These experiences allow students to see what life is like in a professional work setting and begin to understand how they can be a change agent in their field,” says Stewart, calling Loyola’s Engaged Learning experiences “transformative, not transactional.”

The Parkinson School has compiled an impressive list of community partners, ranging from established entities like the American Medical Association and Blue Cross Blue Shield to public agencies like the Chicago Department of Public Health and Chicago Public Schools to nonprofits, nursing homes, startup operations, and hospitals across the Chicago metropolitan area.

“We favor partners who fall in alignment with Loyola’s values of social justice and those who want to be co-educators and see the value of the fresh eyes our students can bring to meaningful projects,” Stewart says.

Driving understanding

Melissa Rodriguez, a senior majoring in healthcare administration, says various Engaged Learning experiences across her Loyola career provided a firsthand look at distinct health care organizations. Her service-learning courses included crafting an improvement plan for a rural Illinois hospital and creating a marketing plan to help the Alzheimer’s Association promote its services to the public.

“The classroom can only do so much,” Rodriguez says. “When you’re in these environments interacting with others, you begin to understand the complexities in such a rich way and learn what it means to be a strong team member contributing to the organization.”

Rodriguez is currently completing an academic internship with the Neuroscience Service Line at University of Chicago Medicine. She has been working on a data analytics project aimed at increasing patient satisfaction while also supporting the introduction of a new patient check-in device.

“It’s been so enlightening to expand my horizons, learn new things about the health care sector, and work to unlock ways to do things better,” says Rodriguez, who hopes to embark on a career helping health care facilities improve efficiency and patient satisfaction.

As for Tylutki, she, too, is completing her academic internship. Her four-month stint in Cardiopulmonary at Northwest Community Hospital in suburban Arlington Heights has focused on supporting patient recovery and well-being, which has included leading rehabilitation classes and delivering presentations on coping with chronic illnesses and managing stress.

“I’ve fallen in love with everything cardiac,” says Tylutki, who will begin pursuing a master’s degree in exercise science at Loyola in the fall. “It’s been amazing to apply lessons from the classroom into real-world environments and bridge the gap between theory and practice, which is exactly the goal of Engaged Learning.”