Experience in addition to your academic work and record are especially important in preparing for a healthcare career. This experiential learning helps you develop the core competencies that health professions programs are looking for in accepted applicants.  

• Community service helps you understand the many factors that impact health and wellness. 
• Engaging with campus groups and programs will help you develop leadership and teamwork skills.
• Research builds problem-solving skills applying learned concepts to important problems in the field. 
• Clinical experience provides important career discernment and advances your skills in working with patients and their families.  

All of the types of experience listed below are important for your development as a future healthcare professional. The first four experiential opportunities are more accessible and can be found on- or near campus or in your home communiites. 

For experiences 1-4 below, we have curated a significant number of these opportunities posted on the Health Professions Camino page and in the links listed below.

1. Community Service Experience 
2. Volunteer Experience in Healthcare Setting
3. Campus Engagement
4. Leadership Opportunities
5. Research Experience
6. Certification Training
7. Clinical Experience - Shadowing, Internships and paid work experience

Research experiences at SCU can be arranged with individual faculty in your major or minor department, just identify a faculty member who does work that is interesting to you, contact them via email and arrange a meeting to hear about their work. Funding can be applied for using the Single Portal for for Undergraduate Research (SPUR).

If you are interested in medical or clinical research, many SCU students have found positions at Kaiser, Stanford, UCSF, and the VA Hospital for both academic year and postgraduate experience and paid positions.  If you are interested in these types of opportunities, review the Camino page and make an appointment with Dr. McNelis to discuss your interests.  

Certification training on-campus will be significantly enhanced for academic year 2023-24, with the EMT certification course being offered in Fall and Winter/Spring.  

Clinical Experience

Clinical experience is essential for the development of patient care skills and career discernment.  This experience provides the opportunity for you to engage with individuals who are ill and need care and allows you to observe healthcare professionals working with patients. This high-value experience is critical and it is more challenging to find these opportunities.   

Two programs on campus that currently provide invaluable training and clinical experience are the Health Care Ethics Internship and SCU Emergency Medical Services squad. These programs have been highly impactful and formative for pre-health students.

New Clinical Experience Opportunities:

We have been developing relationships with a number of local healthcare organizations to provide meaningful clinical experience to our pre-health students. We are actively building these new pipelines for our students and all of these opportunities are listed and announced to pre-health students via our Camino page. We are excited about the opportunities we are working on and we will continue to build new collaborations to support the training of our pre-health students.

Building an Authentic Record of Experience

With so many on-campus opportunities to engage in for meaningful work and experience, how do you choose? Admissions directors for healthcare programs look for an “authentic record of experience”. In other words, work on what you are most interested in and passionate about! Your record should be driven by your motivation and engagement and that will serve you well in the admissions process. 

On-Campus Experiential Opportunities  

SCU has a wealth of resources and opportunities on-campus to support your interests and development: 

• Miller Center Lewis Family Fellowship
• Global Fellows Program
• Single Portal for for Undergraduate Research (SPUR)
• Jean Donovan
• ALZA Corporation Science Scholar
• Clare Boothe Luce
• DeNardo Science Scholar
• De Novo Fellowship
• NSF Noyce Fellowship for Aspiring Math Teachers
• Valeriote Goldman Public Health Leadership Program

Markkula Center for Applied Ethics has many programs for students to engage with ethics and ethical decision making, gain valuable experience and see applied ethics in action through these programs.

Markkula Center Co-curricular Fellowships and Internships:

• Health Care Ethics Internships: Interns shadow doctors, nurses and other health care professionals in hospitals and hospices.
• Honzel Fellowship in Health Care Ethics: The fellow serves as a peer mentor to students in the Health Care Ethics Internship and develops an ethics project with particular relevance to students and alumni.
• Hackworth Fellowships: Students create programs for their peers on ethical issues.
• Government Ethics Fellowship: Fellows work on projects at the intersection of policy and ethics.
• Environmental Ethics Fellowships: Fellows explore the ethics of sustainability on campus.
• Business Ethics Internships: Interns are placed in ethics and compliance divisions of Silicon Valley companies.

Office of Student Fellowships supports Santa Clara University students and alumni as they apply for competitive national and international fellowships. This site is a great resource for finding funding outside of SCU to gain more experiential learning opportunities while building your record through prestigious and competitive fellowship awards.