Sloan program attracts diverse students at Visit Day
By Olivia M. Hall
For many “Sloanies” – those in the Sloan Program in Health Administration – their program is much more than a top 20 curriculum. To them, it means being part of the “Sloan family.” So when the first Sloan Visit Day took place last November, current students, alumni, faculty and staff came out to welcome prospective enrollees into the fold.
Twenty prospective students traveled from as far away as Texas and California to participate in a packed schedule of events, including the Percy Allen II ’75 Sloan Lecture in Urban Healthcare Leadership, breakfasts, themed campus tours, alumni lunches, student panels, the Black Health Legends exhibit and class discussions.
“Our goal is to boost applications and increase the matriculation rate of the most qualified applicants, who often apply to many programs and get in to all,” said Sean Nicholson, director of the Sloan Program in Health Administration. “We often lose some of these early in the admissions process.”
Said Daniel Jean-Philippe, who earned his Cornell undergraduate degree in 2015: “I’d heard about the family feeling, but it’s not one of those things you can say in words, you have to experience it. After Visit Day, I became 200 percent sure I would apply and matriculate.”
The enthusiasm of current students impressed Jean-Philippe and other prospective Sloanies. Five students in Sloan associate director Julie Carmalt’s newly created Event Planning and Leadership class organized and ran the event, supported by 44 student volunteers. Admitted student Joseph De Los Santos from Los Angeles County noted the strong relationship between students and faculty, as well as the participation of a dozen alumni. “The strong alumni presence was very reassuring to me,” he said.
The opportunity to network informally with alumni, who included former and current high-ranking executives in the health care field, was also an important component in Visit Day’s efforts to attract more underrepresented minorities and increase diversity in the program.
“This is why we specifically paired Visit Day with the second biennial Percy Allen II lecture and the Black Health Legends exhibit,” Carmalt said. (The Black Health Legends Exhibit by André Lee ‘72, president of the Leeway Health Education Foundation, opened during Visit Day and tells the story of pioneering black health professionals and institutions in the United States.) “By combining these events, we brought to campus key alumni of color who connect with visiting students on many more levels than just position and title.”
Jean-Philippe, for one, was thrilled to receive personal advice from Percy Allen II, whose classmates, spearheaded by Lee and Clifford Barnes ’74, established the eponymous lecture series in honor of Allen’s contributions to the health care industry. The invited speaker was Patricia A. Maryland, chief operating officer at Ascension Health, the health care delivery subsidiary of the largest nonprofit health system in the United States. And as Jean-Philippe listened to the executive describe her organization’s creative, nontraditional solutions to bring better health to communities, he caught a glimpse of his potential future: “Representation matters, and seeing so much diversity, makes me – and I know it will make other people of color – cast away my doubt that I cannot have a long and successful career in health care,” he said.
Such positive feedback convinces Carmalt that Visit Day will play an important role in shaping the Sloan program in years to come: “It was a pleasure observing our thoughtful, enthusiastic, caring and welcoming students and alumni representing Sloan and so graciously engaging our visiting students. We have never before had such strong early matriculation numbers, and the quality and diversity of our growing cohort blows me away. I’m so grateful, and I can’t wait until next year’s event.”
Olivia M. Hall is a freelance writer.
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