Applied Practice Experience requirements

Begin planning for the applied practice experience in the first semester of your master of public health. Prior to enrollment, review the experience requirements, identify career goals and know the resources available to you.

Planning your experience

1 Check out what students have done

MPH students share experiences of their applied practice experiences. Get ideas for your APE as you learn what they did in their internships and what they learned about public health in the field.

2 Find your applied practice experience

An experience may involve governmental, non-governmental, non-profit, industrial and for-profit settings or appropriate university-affiliated settings with community partners. The college offers resources and assistance for students to find experiences that are beneficial to them and the site with whom they will work. Explore opportunities to find your APE.

3 Identify a site preceptor

Identify a site or agency contact to serve as a site preceptor. If you are planning to complete your APE outside the United States, please be aware additional requirements must be followed, including registering your travel through the Office of International Affairs.

4 Goals, competencies and deliverables

Work with a faculty advisor and site preceptor to develop goals, competencies and proposed deliverables required for the applied practice experience.

Enrolling in the applied practice experience

  1. After the planning steps, complete the APE learning agreement that matches your enrolled program. Remember to save a PDF of the learning agreement before submitting.
  2. Once you complete the learning agreement, the Office of Academic Programs and Student Services (OAPSS) will add you and your faculty advisor to the APE Carmen course (example title: "CPH (Applied Practice Experience) SP25") to track your progress and receive communications about the APE in one central place. Additionally, your learning agreement will be routed to both your preceptor and faculty advisor to review and approve.
  3. After the two approvals are received, and you have uploaded your learning agreement to the Carmen course, OAPSS will add the APE course to your schedule (PUBHLTH 7189) for two credit hours.

Learning agreements

25-26 MPH Learning agreement

This learning agreement is for students in a standard MPH degree program.

MPH/MSW Learning agreement

This learning agreement is for students admitted to the Master of Public Health/Master of Social Work dual degree program.

MPH/MS-Dentistry Learning agreement

This learning agreement is for students admitted to the Master of Public Health/Master of Science in Dentistry dual degree program. 

APE Requirements for biomedical informatics and clinical translational science students

The integrated applied practice experience for biomedical informatics and clinical translational science students includes specific requirements that differ from other MPH specializations. Review the handbooks to understand the APE requirements for these specializations.

Applied Practice Experience end-of-semester deliverables

During the Applied Practice experience, students demonstrate attainment of at least five program competencies, three of which must be foundational competencies. At the conclusion of the experience, each student will need to ensure the following deliverables have been submitted in order to earn a satisfactory grade:

  1. Final report
  2. Two work products
  3. 2024-2025 APE Student Evaluation - Students are required to download their evaluation from Qualtrics and then upload it to the APE Carmen page.
  4. 2024-2025 Preceptor Evaluation
  5. 2024-2025 Faculty Evaluation (sent via email to faculty advisors)

Note: Students who will not complete the applied practice experience by the deadline should notify their faculty advisor, preceptor and the senior career counselor. Students will receive an incomplete and will have until the following semester to finish the requirements.

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