By Ryan Clark
CHS Communications Director

The Clinical Leadership and Management Program has achieved Essential Employability Qualities (EEQ) recertification by the Quality Assurance (QA) Commons through March 31, 2027. 

Essential Employability Qualities Certification (EEQ CERT) is granted by The Quality Assurance Commons for Postsecondary Education after a rigorous process of external and independent review. EEQ Certified programs foster a distinctive set of attributes in their graduates, and these qualities are intended to prepare graduates to make important contributions in their workplaces.

The eight Essential Employability Qualities are:

• communication
• thinking and problem solving
• inquiry
• collaboration
• adaptability
• principles and ethics
• responsibility and professionalism
• learning

Programs participating in EEQ CERT are scored on five categories that represent a comprehensive and integrated framework for employability: Graduate EEQ Preparation, Career Support Services, Employer Engagement, Student and Alumni Engagement, and Public Information.

Karen Clancy, Ph.D., MBA, BHS and Assistant Professor and Program Director for Clinical Leadership and Management, said that initially, CLM was one of only 15 academic programs in Kentucky that was EEQ certified through the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and the QA Commons in 2020. 

The program’s faculty and staff undertook an extensive program curriculum redesign, along with competency mapping, assessment development, self-study, and a comprehensive application process.

“We have worked tirelessly since 2019 to integrate employability competencies across the curriculum,” Clancy said. “And we see the benefits of our work in the jobs and top graduate school admissions that our students now acquire post-graduation. This 2024 re-certification helps assure students and their families that we care about the value of their education and are committed to continually improving quality and responding to industry.”

But Clancy said the work isn’t finished.

“We also aim to achieve first-time certification through our national association, the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA), later this year,” she said. “Recently, we received the preliminary AUPHA self-study report, and EEQ has helped us to meet the AUPHA curriculum assessment standards. We hope to bring back good news about formal AUPHA certification later this fall!”

Scott Lephart, PhD, and Dean of the College of Health Sciences, noted that the qualities featured in the certification are ones that are consistently being requested by employers who are now hiring college graduates.

“And these are qualities that we can definitively say we are offering in the CLM program and across the board in the College of Health Sciences,” Lephart said. “This certification should go a long way to further convince prospective students — and their parents — that here, you will learn the skills you need to not only get hired, but to become successful in any endeavor. We commend the CLM program on this recertification.”