The Health Studies Department today will ask the Council on Academic Affairs to approve a new course designed to educate future teachers on health issues in the workplace.

Robert Bates, Health Studies Department chair, said the proposed course, Health Concepts for Teachers, HST 3000, addresses facilitating the individual needs of pupils, teaching health concepts to students and working with a school’s health administrative system.

He said the class, which has been approved by the department and the College of Education and Professional Studies, was also created to address state requirements.

“It was to fulfill the Illinois State Board of Education requirements for teachers so they would have an understanding of the basic health concepts and incorporate them into their teaching,” Bates said.

The class would show a prospective educator how to respond to health-related issues, such as what to do if a student gets a nosebleed.

Bates said such a situation requires a teacher to know how to address the needs of the student while taking the basic precautionary measures that deal with blood-borne pathogens.

Another dimension of the class is teaching students about health issues. Bates said the course would help students to relate issues such as anthrax transmission and the effects of smoking on the body.

The final area the course would address is health administration, Bates said. Working with a school’s health staff or nurse and individual students’ prescription drug needs would fall under this area.

The council is also scheduled to review a proposal to establish uniform effective dates for curriculum change.

CAA Chair Andrew Methven, biological sciences professor, said Tuesday that the proposal would keep the yearly catalog more uniform.

With the change, curriculum changes approved in the fall semester would not go into effect until the next fall. Changes approved during the spring semester would not go into effect until two fall semesters later.

According to Methven, a change approved in spring of 2002 would go into effect in fall 2003, not fall 2002.

The policy change could make the job of academic advisors easier, but would slow down an individual department’s ability to make changes, Methven said.