Faculty Advisor Responsibilities

Faculty advisors will:  

• Provide guidance and assistance to the student as needed in completing any field training project(s)
• May be contacted by either the student or the site advisor if problems develop during the field training which cannot be resolved at the site
• Review and provide the student with any comments on the final field training report
• Review the student and field site mentor evaluations with the student
• Assign the student a grade of satisfactory (S) or unsatisfactory (U)

It is possible to serve as both the faculty advisor and the site advisor. If a faculty member has a project that would serve as a valuable learning experience—for example, a community research project—a student can count this as field training experience.

Current students should log into the UB Learns MPH Portal and select Field Training to determine if they are eligible for a waiver, and access the Waiver form.

A faculty advisor will meet with his/her advisee at the beginning of the field training process to help the student determine an appropriate site location, after the field training site and site mentor have been identified (the site advisor may be included in this meeting), and as needed throughout the field training

For documentation, the student will submit the following to the faculty advisor:

• Form 1, Confirmation of Field Training
• Form 2, Early Review of Field Training
• Form 3, Field Site Mentor’s Evaluation of the Field Training
• Form 4, Student Evaluation of the Field Training
• Time Record Form
• Field Training Report

Protected Health Information and Confidentiality
Throughout students’ field training, and especially when completing forms and reports, they need to be mindful of the confidential information—including patients’ personal health information (PHI)—that they have access to at field training sites. A faculty advisor should remind students that whenever they discuss or document field training, they need to ‘de-identify’ or remove all elements that could be used to identify an individual.

Based on meetings with the student and the site advisor and field training documentation, including evaluations, a faculty advisor will assign the student a grade of satisfactory (S) or unsatisfactory (U).

If a student registers for field training credit and is unable to begin or complete the training, a faculty advisor may assign an interim incomplete grade (I/U). The student can complete the work in a subsequent semester without registering for field training as long as they are registered for credit in the MPH program at the time they do the field training (the student would still be covered by a site affiliation agreement).