Innovation in Education

NUIP faculty strive to move beyond being classroom lecturers by implementing innovative teaching strategies to enhance student engagement and enhance learning.

A snapshot of our innovative instructional methods are listed below:

Replacing Stale Lectures With an Active Educational Modality called Team-Based Learning

Starting in fall 2017, NUIP will deliver its core graduate classes using a novel teaching modality termed Team-Based Learning. The educational philosophy replaces lectures with an active, small group collaborative learning environment to increase student engagement and collaboration.

The technique, which has been used with great success at various professional schools (e.g. the prestigious Duke-NUS Graduate Medical in Singapore), rapidly transitions students to a mode of learning better suited for a lifelong career in clinical care and/or biomedical research.

Research Emphasis on Translational Bioscience

Our PhD program emphasizes original research that we enhance with classroom training out of the primary literature. Our course content focuses on getting students to understand methodology, technologies, and research design, rather than memorizing any particular set of facts.

Our goal is to prepare students for the ever-changing and rapid pace of medical research. We encourage students to become familiar with a wide range of experimental systems, from worms to mice to humans, recognizing that all are important in our fight to combat metabolic disease.

Students, through attendance and presentations at international conferences and internal seminars, bump elbows with the world’s finest scientists from Utah and around the world.

Coordinating Clinical Care & Coursework to Prepare Clinical Dietitians

Our Coordinated Master’s Program has received considerable attention for its innovative curriculum which integrates clinical internships with classroom learning. Our students are trained to wade through the cacophony of noise in the press/social media to advise clients using the most rigorous evidence-based standards.

Graduates of this CMP program perform exceptionally well on the national exam to become a registered dietitian.

Interprofessional Education & Culinary Medicine

The health landscape has changed markedly in recent years, placing greater attention on team-based approaches to provide the strongest clinical care possible.

The Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology adheres to this philosophy and is an active participant in interprofessional (IPE) instructional activities. We work closely with other professional schools within the University of Utah Health (e.g. medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc.) to provide a large cadre of IPE experiences.

For example, in 2016 our department partnered with the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine to launch a new program in Culinary Medicine which integrates CMP and medical students in a kitchen environment to discuss the impact of food on nutrition on specific health outcomes.