UNM Selected to Participate in U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Recruiting Challenge

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico (UNM) Ander­son School of Man­age­ment is one of only five schools through­out the coun­try par­tic­i­pat­ing in the U.S. Pub­lic Health Ser­vice (PHS) Com­mis­sioned Corps Recruit­ing Chal­lenge dur­ing the fall 2011 semes­ter. Work­ing in con­junc­tion with the PHS and EdVen­ture Part­ners, stu­dents in the pro­mo­tion man­age­ment course have cre­ated a student-run agency respon­si­ble for research­ing, imple­ment­ing and eval­u­at­ing an inte­grated mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions cam­paign. The cam­paign is aimed at gen­er­at­ing an appli­cant pool for fam­ily med­i­cine, psy­chi­a­try and den­tal careers with the PHS.

“This industry-education part­ner­ship pro­gram is a great expe­ri­ence for our stu­dents,” said Pro­fes­sor John Benavidez. “It enables them to take the con­cepts learned in the class­room and put them to work in the real world with a global organization.”

The 23 senior stu­dents in the course have been assigned to one of five depart­ments: adver­tis­ing, pub­lic rela­tions, cam­paign strat­egy and imple­men­ta­tion, reports and pre­sen­ta­tion, or research. The stu­dents started by con­duct­ing research to find out more about the tar­get mar­ket. After ana­lyz­ing their research find­ings, they will then cre­ate and imple­ment their strat­egy for reach­ing the tar­get mar­ket to achieve the client objec­tives. Stu­dents receive a bud­get of $3,000 to develop and exe­cute the cam­paign. At the end of the semes­ter, stu­dents will con­duct post-campaign research to mea­sure the suc­cess of the project, and then give a for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion to the client sum­ma­riz­ing their cam­paign and results.

The cam­paign goal is to encour­age qual­i­fied can­di­dates to apply for med­ical and den­tal careers within the PHS. The cam­paign is specif­i­cally tar­geted towards poten­tial appli­cants cur­rently enrolled in a fam­ily med­i­cine, psy­chi­a­try or den­tal res­i­dency pro­gram at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico School of Med­i­cine. Med­ical can­di­dates must have an M.D. or D.O. degree and one com­pleted year of post­grad­u­ate med­ical edu­ca­tion, while den­tal can­di­dates are required to have a D.D.S. or D.M.D. degree. In addi­tion, can­di­dates must be less then 44 years of age, a US cit­i­zen, and pass a phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion and exten­sive back­ground check. The PHS Com­mis­sioned Corps careers are the per­fect fit for highly skilled men and women who seek pro­fes­sional ful­fill­ment, enjoy chal­lenges, and want to improve the qual­ity of pub­lic health for the Nation’s com­mu­ni­ties that are most in need.

For more infor­ma­tion about these career oppor­tu­ni­ties and to apply, visit http://www.usphs.gov.

Sid­ney Scheer
Rick and Deb­bie John­son Mar­ket­ing Cen­ter
Ander­son School of Man­age­ment
Mobile (303) 653‑7877
mktctr@unm.edu