Students in the BS Health Sciences and BS Health & Wellness programs complete a senior practicum as part of their graduation requirements. One part of the course requires them to work 60 hours over the course of the semester culminating in an Internship Completion Certificate facilitated by Ms. Adrienne McNally, director of NYIT Experiential Education, in tandem with School of Health Professions (SHP) course professor, Dr. Tobi Abramson. The other part of the course focuses on development of professional skills and behaviors where Dr. Abramson enables the students to participate in a collaborative redesign project with Professor Martha Siegel’s Interior Design students.

While in previous years each inter-professional group virtually redesigned a different facility serving older adults that included assisted living quarters, adult day care centers and private homes, this year each group created different plans for transforming a single multi-disciplinary medical clinical. Design students’ perspectives were enhanced by the considerations the Health Sciences students brought to light while Health Sciences students gained a whole new appreciation for the effect of the physical environment upon health outcomes. On December 1, 2017 each of the five groups presented their final redesign of the facility in a professional forum that included fellow students, faculty member and judges Dr. Sheldon Fields, SHP Dean; Christopher Frumusa, MHA, SHP Alum; Dale Greenwald, IDA Director of Interior Design, EYP Architecture and Engineering; and Prof. Carl Hauser, NYIT Department of Interior Design.