Graduate Certificate in One Health and the Environment

University of Maine

The One Health and the Environment graduate certificate is a highly interdisciplinary 12-credit program designed to be completed in two years. One Health is a relatively new science integrating medical, veterinary, and environmental sciences. Through the unique location of the University of Maine campuses and their proximity to rural northern and coastal communities where commercial activities are focused on the extraction (e.g., farming, forestry, and commercial fishing) or enjoyment (e.g., nature-based tourism, hunting and recreational fishing) of natural resources prospective students have the opportunity for hands-on training. The need to train a One Health workforce is important as most infectious diseases are transmitted from both domestic and wild animals to humans (e.g., Lyme, Zika, swine and avian flus, and apparently, COVID-19).This program creates a deeply integrated learning environment in which trainees move from being disciplinarians to becoming convergent researchers. Knowledge integration of the biophysical and social sciences is particularly important to fully understand the roles that institutions, ecosystem health and humans play in ''wicked'' plant/animal/human health problems, how those problems affect society and how to design innovative solutions. Scientists who work across disciplines must also be able to communicate basic research findings to applied practitioners in the medical, veterinary, and public health communities, as well as to local-to-global policymakers, industry leaders, and citizens.

College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture