Application Deadlines
- Fall: August 1
- Spring: December 1
As a qualified UMBC undergraduate student, you may apply to the Accelerated Program in your junior or senior year, earning up to six credits toward a future graduate certificate or nine credits toward a future master’s degree. You will benefit by shortening the time to degree completion, experiencing the cost savings of taking graduate courses at undergraduate tuition rates, having flexible learning options (many courses taught in evening or in hybrid format), and gaining practical knowledge and skills.
At a Glance
Delivery
Hybrid
Online
Location
- UMBC Campus (Catonsville)
Programs Offered
Key Benefits:
- Earn your bachelor’s and master’s or certificate in as little as five years.
- Enhance your career potential.
- Apply in the future to a UMBC graduate program with a $50 graduate fee waiver.
- Pay toward your first graduate semester with UMBC’s $1,000 Alumni Scholarship.
Accelerated Program Admissions Requirements:
To be eligible for the accelerated graduate certificate or master’s degree option, you must meet the following requirements:
- Have a minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0. If less than 3.0, admission consideration based on Graduate Program Director’s discretion.
- Be a junior or senior at UMBC, and be admitted at least one semester prior to completion of a bachelor’s degree.
Accelerated Program Application Process
- All accelerated program application materials will be submitted through UMBC’s Docusign platform. Complete the following steps to submit your application through Docusign:
- Complete the Graduate School Accelerated Program Application Form. List Renee Eisenhuth, reisen@umbc.edu, as the Graduate Program Coordinator, and Erin Van Dyke, evandyk1@umbc.edu, as Graduate Program Director.
- Attach your unofficial undergraduate transcripts to the Docusign form.
- Optional: Obtain and attach recommendation letters. Recommendation letters are not required but may be included to support your application.
After Accelerated Program Admission
Once admitted to the Accelerated Program, review the course schedule and complete the Approval for Undergraduates to Take Courses for Graduate Credit form to request permission to enroll in the graduate-level courses you plan to take in your first semester as an Accelerated Program student. This form must be resubmitted each semester you plan to take graduate-level courses as an undergraduate.
One semester prior to the completion of your bachelor’s degree, submit an application to the Graduate School. The Graduate School application fee is waived for Accelerated Program students (contact the Graduate School if you do not have the fee waiver code).
Once admitted to the Graduate School, complete the Graduate School’s Credit Transfer form to transfer the graduate-level courses you took as an undergraduate to the graduate program. You may transfer up to six credits toward a graduate certificate or up to nine credits toward a master’s degree. Only graduate courses completed with a B or higher are eligible to be transferred.
Course Selection
- As an undergraduate student in the Accelerated Program, you may take up to nine graduate-level credits that may be double-counted toward your undergraduate degree.
- Review your course selections with your undergraduate advisor to ensure the graduate-level courses will count toward your undergraduate degree.
- The following courses are eligible for undergraduates in the Accelerated Program to complete:
This course is an introduction to text analytics using Python programming language. Students are introduced to programming and data mining using Python as a primary language. Principles of program design, programming structures, data structures, program testing, and debugging and text analytics is covered. Students will gain the skills necessary to implement Python-based solutions to Health IT problems and bio-medical (BMI) research challenges. This course not only teaches programming, scripting and text processing, but also provides an understanding of the broader context regarding how these programming techniques are deployed to address Health IT/BMI challenges. Upon completion, students will be able to use Python programming techniques and commands to write scripts to perform various user and administrative tasks, and to utilize advanced features of the language. Student will also be able to articulate an understanding of how Python is used in real Health IT/BMI use cases. As an end of course project students will implement, evaluate and refine a solution to explore biomedical data.
As the first required course in the series, Health Informatics I starts with introductory topics and proceeds with an overview of the essential topics of Health IT. Consistent with the interdisciplinary nature of Health IT, the course touches people and organizational aspects of health information systems as well as technology. While covering the essentials of Health Informatics, the course also achieves depth by engaging students in a semester- long study of a particular topic in Health IT. Some of the topics covered in this course include electronic health records, practice management, health information exchange, data standards, consumer health informatics and mobile health.
This course provides a comprehensive overview on the policy and administration of health information technology. Students will develop an understanding of the management principles in the American healthcare delivery system, including the roles of patients, third party insurance payers, and healthcare professionals. The course will also include health care policy in the US with specific examples from Medicare, Medicaid and ongoing efforts for healthcare reform.
This course provides a comprehensive overview of important legal principles affecting health information technology and management, with a focus on the intersection of these legal principles with business ethics. The student will learn how to think through and process legal problems consistent with ethical norms, and how to analyze business risks in light of operative legal constructs, taking into consideration ethical issues, to arrive at a range of correct business decisions. Throughout the class the student will learn substantive legal principles including an overview of constitutional, contract, tort, corporate and regulatory law. Students will work in groups during certain exercises, role play in real and hypothetical case studies, and make a final presentation of a comprehensive legal and ethical health IT problem.
This course provides an overview of quality measurement and process improvement as they relate specifically to the health care industry. The course will focus on the tools, techniques, and resources available to health care professionals through effective use of health IT. Students will learn how to create quality benchmarks, gather data, and analyze results. They will learn how to design specific processes that directly address analytical findings and have the potential to improve outcomes. Students will understand a variety of implementation strategies for new processes, and be able to use health IT and other tools to measure the overall effectiveness. They will also learn how to prioritize improvement efforts across complicated business and practice systems. Students will work in groups during certain exercises, explore real and hypothetical case studies, and make a final presentation of an improvement process and implementation which utilizes health IT as their course project.
This course provides a comprehensive overview of the concept of considering “non-medical” aspects of life that can have a direct impact on individual and public health, most commonly referred to as the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH); and how health informatics and other health related technologies intersect and influence these SDoH conditions. Students will develop an understanding of how SDoH is defined in the context of clinical care, clinical research and public health and social policy. The course content is organized around categories of SDoH conditions which include access to basic needs, social inclusion and discrimination, experiences of personal and structural trauma, the protective and risk factors of high-speed internet and digital media as well as physical environment and climate. Students will have the opportunity to contemplate cross-cutting SDoH concepts including the interconnectedness of the SDoH conditions examined in the course, the influence of historical and present-day discrimination of health risk and outcomes and the impact of compound social problems on health outcomes and compound health problems of social outcomes. Students will be able to appraise currently undertaken and contemplate unmined opportunities to apply technology to help recognize and address Social Determinants of Health towards better individual, community, public and global health outcomes. The course will be scoped to focus on the United States health system and its people but will include recognition of SDoH as a global and universal human phenomenon.
Other HIT courses may be considered if a student has prior experience in the topic of interest. Exception: HIT 760: Health Informatics Capstone, must be taken while a graduate student after at least 21 credits have been completed.
Accelerated Program Academic Standards
Once admitted to the Accelerated Program, you must maintain a 3.0 GPA or higher. If you earn a C or lower in a graduate-level course while in the Accelerated Program, that course cannot be transferred to a master’s degree or graduate certificate. You may be removed from the Accelerated Program if your GPA falls below 3.0, if you receive more than two C grades, or if you receive any D or F grade. Consult your undergraduate advisor to determine if any grades received in graduate-level courses will affect your ability to complete your undergraduate degree.
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