GPA and Health Educator Success: Do Grades Really Matter?

Undergraduate health education preparation programs strive to provide students with both knowledge and skills to facilitate their successful launch as health education professionals. Given multiple curricular demands, these programs often are required to choose among potentially competing educational opportunities in constructing students' programs of study. Increasingly, fieldwork has become a capstone experience that marks completion of an undergraduate's preparation. Prior to that experience, students have classroom opportunities that are presumed predictive of success in the field. Indeed, some health education fieldwork placement decisions hinge on students' academic performance. But does performance in the classroom predict success in the field? The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between students' academic performance and their fieldwork success as entry level health educators. Students' GPA (derived in multiple ways: cumulatively, from only professional preparation courses, etc.) is examined relative to community-based preceptors' evaluations of student performance of key health educator responsibilities (needs assessment, planning, evaluation, advocacy, etc.). Analysis indicates no relationship between graduating GPA and assessments of students' overall performance in the field (p>.05). GPA links only to students' ability to frame objectives, operationalize ideas and craft assessments (p<05). Illustrative of other analyses, performance in selected majors' coursework (e.g., curriculum & planning; program organization/implementation) correlates (p<.05) with students' ability to evaluate, access reliable data, and write professionally. Analyses explore additional health educator responsibilities relative to students' performance in their undergraduate health education preparation. Recommendations for enhanced undergraduate preparation (e.g., infusing service learning opportunities into health education majors' coursework) to maximize real-world capacity are considered. Also suggested by the analysis is the need to consider alternative approaches for assessing students' readiness to perform as entry level health educators. Only with successful performance in the field can health education professionals best advocate for themselves and their programs. How best to prepare health education undergraduates for the professional demands of life-after-college remains a continuing challenge for our field.