By Joie N. Marhefka
I can’t believe that 2022 is coming to an end already. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating the new year and starting our spring 2021 semester, and now it’s almost 2023. Time certainly flies! I thought this would be a great opportunity to look back on 2022 – both the good things that happened and the challenges it presented. It is also time to look ahead to the opportunities and challenges that 2023 holds.
One of the best things about 2022, from my perspective as faculty at Penn State New Kensington, was that we were able to have a full year of in-person classes. Although we were lucky to be able to hold the majority of our classes on campus again starting in the fall of 2020, we did have to move them back online for several weeks during the late fall and winter of that year. It was great not having to worry about online lectures, tests, or especially labs this year. In addition to normal classes, it was great to be able to take field trips again and to have guest speakers on campus. One of the lessons we learned during the pandemic was how to have effective virtual guest lectures, which greatly diversified the speakers and topics. And, while it is great to be able to continue to hear from these various individuals, there is nothing like having speakers in the classroom with the students.
In addition, it was nice to attend an in-person conference again in 2022. Although virtual conferences during 2020 and 2021 allowed me to keep up with the latest trends in healthcare technology management (HTM) and in education, it was great to be back on site in 2022. I was able to network at the AAMI Exchange, catching up with old contacts and meeting new ones. I also got to check out all of the latest technologies, which is much easier to do in-person than virtually.
While 2022 brought a lot of good things, it also presented some challenges. Supply chain issues, which were aggravated by the pandemic, sometimes made it difficult to get the supplies we needed for our labs. The impacts on my teaching were relatively minor, but I can imagine this led to more significant difficulties in the HTM industry.
A bigger challenge for our program is fewer students are enrolling in our courses. This is likely due to a combination of factors. In our area, the population is declining, and high school graduating classes have been getting smaller, giving us less of a pool from which to recruit students. The economy and low unemployment rates have made it less attractive for prospective students to enroll in school rather than entering the workforce. In addition, we did not have the opportunity to talk to high school classes and offer tours during the pandemic, which made it tougher to familiarize prospective students with our program and HTM careers. I know that the HTM field, as a whole, is facing a similar challenge filling open positions as more employees are nearing retirement age, schools are closing HTM programs, and the number of students graduating from programs such as ours is dwindling.
From my perspective, the biggest challenge going into 2023 is recruiting more students to our program so that we will graduate more students in the coming years, providing qualified candidates to fill the many expected openings in the field. While our class of 2024 appears to be slightly larger than our class of 2023, we would like to see larger incoming classes in the future. This also offers an opportunity for us to get word out about our program and about career opportunities in HTM. I look forward to working with local industry leaders and with local high schools to expose students to the opportunities available in the field. Hopefully, this will help our classes grow beyond pre-pandemic sizes and help to fill employment needs in the industry.
Finally, 2023 offers an opportunity to combine innovative teaching techniques that we developed out of necessity during the pandemic with in-person instruction. This will lead to the best overall education and experience for our students. It will allow them to graduate prepared for successful careers as HTM professionals.
I look forward to what 2023 has to offer and wish you all a healthy and happy new year!
– Joie N. Marhefka, Ph.D., is the biomedical engineering technology program coordinator at Penn State New Kensington.
