The Health Fitness in Preventive and Rehabilitative Program signed 491 majors this fall.

The Office of Institutional Research reports it is the most popular major at Central Michigan University.

“I have always wanted a career in the medical field, and the sciences have always been a favorite of mine,” Saginaw senior Megan O’Brien said. “When I came to Central, I was considering the physical therapy and physician’s assistant programs.”

She said the clinically-based labs, state of the art equipment, small classes, and great professors and staff make it a well-built program.

The Health Professions Building houses the latest health fitness equipment, such as an electrocardiogram and exercise testing equipment, said David Wisner, assistant professor of health sciences.

“The new Health Professions Building has improved the quality of how we deliver the program,” Wisner said. “We have an undergraduate-based cadaver anatomy course, which is rare at the undergraduate level.”

A lot of the classes in CMU’s undergraduate program aren’t offered elsewhere until the graduate level, professor of health sciences Paul Visich said.

Visich teaches junior- and senior-level classes related to clinical exercises, such as cardiogram interpretation. He said his classes also teach students how to appropriately evaluate a patient’s health risk factors and how to prescribe exercises and lifestyle modifications.

“All of our students have an internship experience the summer of senior year in a clinical or corporate-type center,” Visich said.

He said this experience makes graduates marketable in the workforce.

This undergraduate degree offers many different possibilities after graduation, Visich said. Graduates of the Health Fitness in Preventive and Rehabilitative Program can be hired right out of college in both clinical and corporate settings, he said.

Another option for graduates is continuing their education in graduate programs or medical school, Visich said.

In response to the large shortage of nurses across the country, some graduates enroll in a one-year accelerated nurses program for a registered nurse degree, he said.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, health care industry occupation wage and salary employment are expected to increase 27 percent through the year 2014.

Because of the obesity issue in this country, cardiovascular disease will continue to be a large problem, Visich said. These graduates are needed to help combat this disease, he said.

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E-mail the author: Nicole Burdiss