Chattahoochee Tech Gets Healthier

As enrollment soars at eight campuses, students will have the option starting in January of entering programs in health information technology and occupational therapy assistance to strengthen their chances of landing health care jobs.

The health information technology program will be based at the in Acworth. It will be available initially to approximately 36 students who have at least a 2.75 grade point average in all prerequisite coursework and scored at least 70 on the Test of Essential Academic Skills.

Health information technology graduates will work for care providers in various settings in which they assemble patients’ health information, such as examination results and medical history. The program takes three semesters.

Students must turn in applications by 3 p.m. Thursday at the North Metro Campus.

The Austell campus will offer the occupational therapy assistant program. It will prep students to work under the supervision of occupational therapists to help improve the quality of life for people with emotional, developmental, physical and mental impairments.

The program lasts five semesters and will be available to 10 to 12 students initially. Interested students must have at least a 3.0 grade point average.

The deadline has passed for the program’s first class.

“The two programs are very unique and can address a large need for students’ interest,” said Ron Webb, the college’s dean of health sciences.

Webb said Marietta-based Chattahoochee Tech’s enrollment in pre-health programs has grown at least 5 percent in the past year.

The college hired Traci Swartz, the director of the occupational therapy assistant program, in March after she did “mostly research” the two previous years at Georgia Tech.

The Chattahoochee Tech program will be the first at a public institution in the Atlanta area, she said.

“The challenge of developing a new program and to educate the students in the area” attracted Swartz to the job, she said. The college “can tailor the program the way we’d like it instead of coming into an existing program.”

Swartz said she plans to have her students work more in the community than students do in other occupational therapy assistant programs, which emphasize hospital settings.

“I think there’s more need in the community,” she said. “We hope to form relationships with a variety of organizations, such as nonprofits.”

Chattahoochee Tech’s occupational therapy assistant program is being funded entirely through a five-year, $2.5 million Title III federal grant, awarded to the school in 2008.

Lindsey Riley, the school’s grants coordinator, said the grant will pay for the program’s personnel and their training, equipment, and student supplies, such as library books.

“The program will be self-sustaining by 2013 when the grant ends,” Riley said.

Webb said Chattahoochee Tech will add at least one more health-related program next year, according to information he received last week from Provost Ron Newcomb: The Canton campus will offer clinical laboratory management.

Chattahoochee Tech is the largest technical college and the sixth-largest institution of higher education in Georgia, with more than 18,000 students enrolled during the past academic year, spokeswoman Rebecca Long said. The school offers more than 75 programs at campuses in Bartow, Cherokee, Cobb, Gilmer, Paulding and Pickens counties.