Prioritize compassionate, holistic care for patients and families. You will learn to advocate for the rights of the poor and vulnerable, communicating principles of a more just and equitable healthcare system. Approach your health vocation as lifelong learners committed to the values of Catholic social teaching.

Experience human-centered coursework and develop skills in understanding, synthesizing, and communicating issues central to the human condition. We believe this minor is essential for future healthcare professionals.

Explore Loras Minors

Our interdisciplinary minors are designed to offer you a unique opportunity to study beyond your chosen major and gain a broader and more comprehensive understanding of complex societal issues and topics.

You will explore both the concepts involved in effective writing and the practice of those concepts in community and workplace settings while deepening and enriching your knowledge base with electives.

Highlighted Courses

Athletic training students active learning in the lab

Case Studies in Health and Medical Humanities

Through focused exploration of moments in human experience of health, care, illness, wellness, disability, healing, and medicine, students will begin to understand ways in which social, cultural, psychological, aesthetic, and professional differences affect illness and access to treatment, historically and in the present time. Designed to introduce students to the learning outcomes of the Health and Medical Humanities minor, this course utilizes a case study approach rooted in the discipline of the faculty member instructing the course.

The Forgotten Burial Ground

This course explores how Americans understand death and burial practices over time, particularly comparing the pre-Civil War antebellum period to the Beautification of Death Movement of the late 19th/early twentieth century in a Dubuque context. As part of the course, students explore the narratives people compose to understand death and how those narratives change over time. It particularly explores how human understanding of death and the sacred spaces associated with it change in response to a range of social, cultural, technological, intellectual, and economic factors.

Science, Medicine, and (Dis)Ease in Literature and Film

Because illness, physical and mental suffering, scientific endeavors, and the concept of “health” and “(Dis)ease” can have such powerful and disturbing effects, literary works depicting them offer unique insights into human experience. This course introduces students both to the status and role of literature as it engages with medical, scientific, and technological concepts and to the concept of writing on and through the body. In this course, students will consider the principles and concepts that form the basis of knowledge in humanities and develop awareness of the contexts (historical, social, ethical, and disciplinary) in which literature and science (e)merge. They will read, discuss, and write about a selection of literary works that depict conditions like cancer, tuberculosis, post-partum depression, asthma, blindness, OCD, anxiety, plague, and death/fear of death; explore the symbolic and allegorical meanings that have come to be associated with them; and consider the roles and responsibilities of physicians and caregivers charged with treating patients with these conditions. Students will read multiple genres, including personal narrative, the short story, Science Fiction, and Dystopian literature.

Clubs & Orgs

We have a variety of opportunities for you to get involved from the moment you set foot on campus.

Alliance
Athletic Training Club
Du-Buddies
DuDawgs
DuHealth
Guild of St. Genesius
The Hidden Opponent

Integrated Communication Club
Interfaith Leaders
Loras Health and Fitness Club
Loras Mental Health Club
Loras College Psi Chi
Social Work Council

Loras Degree Folder

graduate degree Opportunities

Loras offers a variety of associated graduate and accelerated dual degree programs.