College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College
One hundred and twenty-eight years ago, Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent founded the Sargent School of Physical Training in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the decades that followed the establishment of the school, Dr. Sargent built a reputation as an innovator in physical conditioning and health promotion. At the Sargent School, students learned training techniques to strengthen and improve the physical capabilities of all people, including both disabled and healthy individuals. This emphasis on comprehensive health care remains a focus of the College today.
Sargent College became part of Boston University in 1929, five years after Dr. Sargent’s death. His son and administrative successor, Ledyard, tendered ownership of the school to the University, establishing a relationship that has continued to strengthen the College’s curriculum of health & rehabilitation sciences. The College moved from Cambridge to Boston University’s Charles River Campus in 1958 and relocated to a renovated facility on Commonwealth Avenue in 1990. Sargent College’s building is fully equipped with outpatient health care clinics, research and practice laboratories, an instructional study center, and modern classroom and computing facilities.
As knowledge about health expands and society’s health care needs become more complex, the College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College continues to improve its degree programs to meet the needs of future health professionals.
Why Study at Boston University College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College?
Recognizing that the basis of an excellent professional education must be a sound liberal arts background, Sargent College builds a sequence of arts and sciences courses into its undergraduate programs and encourages students to choose from a variety of electives. Faculty strive to create a learning environment that fosters the development of positive values and effective interpersonal skills that are the mark of outstanding health professionals. As instructors, they encourage students to question, think critically, evaluate objectively, and search for new answers to health care problems. As advisors, they work individually with students, helping them plan their courses of study and offering career counseling.
Fieldwork is an important component in all the programs of Sargent College. To provide students with clinical experience, the College affiliates with hospitals, rehabilitation centers, schools, community health agencies, and research laboratories in the Boston area and throughout the United States.
Sargent College students enjoy the advantages of a small college and the resources of a major university. Within the College they take part in small classes. Professors are accessible when students need help with an assignment. When eager to learn more about a specialized area of professional practice, they find faculty a source of encouragement and guidance.
Outside Sargent College, students may cross-register for courses at the University’s 16 other schools and colleges. They use a range of reference and special libraries, science laboratories, research centers, and career-planning services. Leisure activities include sports, recreation programs, and arts and entertainment events both on campus and in the surrounding Boston community.
Our Clinical Core
Clinical settings and hands-on experience are part of all our clinical graduate programs of study as we educate our students to become highly skilled professional practitioners. With more than 1,400 clinical affiliations, we have one of the most extensive clinical networks of any university in the United States and more than twice the number of clinical options offered by other graduate programs in major northeastern cities. Our affiliations include centers throughout the U.S. and overseas. Knowing the importance of the clinical experience to your success, full-time faculty work to match you with the clinical placement that best suits you. Many of the faculty members at BU Sargent College are practicing clinicians who bring real-world experience into the classroom, and BU Sargent College also runs various clinical centers that provide student training.
Our Research
From studying effective rehabilitation for people with Parkinson’s disease to understanding why skeletal muscle atrophy occurs, the faculty of BU Sargent College are active researchers as well as instructors. They know that to be an effective evidence-based practitioner, you need to be able to interpret and apply the results of research in diagnosing and treating patients. In fact, the College secured $8 million this year for its research projects from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education. There are more than 20 research laboratories at BU Sargent College and faculty research specializations include neuroscience, psychoacoustics, language acquisition, muscle physiology, ergonomics, autism, aphasia, sports-related injuries, and cerebral palsy. On a daily basis, our students work side-by-side with the faculty who are doing the research to lay the foundations for evidence-based practices for the health and rehabilitation sciences professions.
Our Facilities
BU Sargent College houses all of our programs in health and rehabilitation sciences in one state-of-the-art building in the heart of the BU campus and minutes away from downtown Boston and the Boston medical community. This distinctive, interdisciplinary environment is unlike any other and enables those from all disciplines of health and rehabilitation sciences to work together on teaching and research projects. Our environment reflects the direction of future health care management, which requires professionals from many disciplines to work together to effectively treat patients.
Specialized research and teaching laboratories are located throughout the building at 635 Commonwealth Avenue. Faculty members in Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences conduct research and teach in the Aphasia Research Laboratory, the Psychoacoustics Laboratory, and the Language Science & Speech Perception laboratories.
Students of health sciences learn how to conduct health evaluations such as cardiovascular fitness tests, dietary analysis, and body composition tests in the Clinical Centers’ Fitness Evaluation Program. The Fitness Evaluation Program, staffed by faculty members and graduate students, provides comprehensive fitness analysis and prescriptions. Other on-site research and teaching facilities include the Muscle Physiology Laboratory, the Neuromicroscopy Laboratory, the Muscle Metabolism Laboratory, and the Human Physiology Laboratory for Exercise, Metabolism & Aging.
The Physical Therapy Programs have four research laboratories for the study of human movement. Students and faculty are conducting research into movement disorders such as those found in Parkinson’s disease, stroke, cerebral palsy, and other neuromotor diseases.
The Occupational Therapy Programs have designated teaching laboratories, the Goode Assessment Library, as well as faculty research laboratories.
Graduate students have access to research and training opportunities through the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, a federally funded research and training center and a World Health Organization collaborating center.
A multiservice outpatient clinic in the building allows students to learn health care techniques from faculty clinicians. Observation rooms with two-way mirrors and digital video recording equipment are located throughout the clinic, providing an atmosphere for learning that does not interfere with treatment.
