Not Just Another Committee: How to Create a College-Specific Framework to Support Interprofessional Education

During the 2019-2020 academic year, the Southeast Missouri State University College of Education, Health, and Human Studies initiated a college-level Interprofessional Education (IPE) Committee to identify methods for collaboration, interprofessional research opportunities, and cross-disciplinary learning experiences. The IPE Committee determined that IPE was an installed component of the healthcare majors, without significant interactions between programs, and non-healthcare programs were omitted from formal IPE efforts. The exclusion of the non-healthcare academic majors from traditional healthcare initiatives limited faculty and student interactions, notably between the educator preparatory and healthcare programs. The IPE Committee determined the need to develop a college-specific framework that includes healthcare and non-healthcare academic programs. The IPE Committee additionally decided to combine the IPEC Core Competencies with the 4Cs of Future Ready Learning to create an inclusive framework. The IPE Committee created a college-specific competency map and disseminated the information through all college departments to further promote IPE collaboration across the college. The IPE Committee purposely created a sustainable structure to leverage existing interprofessional relationships and discover new opportunities for interprofessional collaboration. Colleges housing healthcare and non-healthcare programs can develop distinctive methods for incorporating IPE into their collaborative academic structure.