About CHHS
CHHS Points of Pride
The WMU College of Health and Human Services (CHHS), internationally renowned, is consistently ranked in the top ten of colleges and schools of allied health receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is the highest NIH-funded allied health school not associated with a medical center.
U.S. News & World Report ranks the college’s occupational therapy, physician assistant and speech pathology graduate programs among the top 50 programs of their kind in the nation. Rehabilitation counseling, social work and audiology are also ranked among the best graduate schools in the nation.
All of CHHS’s academic programs are housed in a new (2005), high tech, state-of-the-art, environmentally sensitive, 195,000 square foot building on WMU’s Oakland Drive Campus.
Through the college’s Unified Clinics, WMU health and human services students practice their skills in a near-by clinical setting, and community members benefit from excellent services in areas such as occupational and speech therapy, women’s health, substance abuse, children’s trauma assessment, and hearing and low vision.
CHHS students are welcome at clinical placement sites in every county in Michigan—and in every state in the nation.
The Department of Blindness and Low Vision Studies is the oldest and largest—and is considered the best program of its kind—in the world.
Established in 2002, the innovative, cohort-based Ph.D. program in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences prepares doctoral level researchers, educators, and leaders with the interdisciplinary skills and vision to improve health and human services in all areas of society.
The Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology (SPPA) at WMU was one of the nation’s earliest clinics for the study and treatment of speech disorders and the preparation of speech therapists. Its founder Dr. Charles Van Riper was a pioneer in the field, known world-wide for his innovative treatment for stuttering. The SPPA graduate program, currently ranked 38th in the nation, was the first in Michigan and one of the first six in the nation to gain accreditation.
In 2006, just two years after its initiation, the WMU Bronson School of Nursing, Lillian Wald Nursing Honor Society was granted a charter as the Upsilon Epsilon Chapter of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.
CHHS's Holistic Health Care Program is one of only four similar programs in the country and offers both an undergraduate minor and graduate certificate which foster “holism” within health care and across other disciplines.
The college’s Occupational Therapy Department is the first and oldest non-teaching programat WMU—its founding in 1922 initiated Western’s expansion from a teachers’ college to a comprehensive institution of higher learning—and the highest ranking Occupational Therapy program in Michigan by US News and World Reports, 2008.
CHHS’s Physician Assistant (PA) program is the first to be established with legislative approval and funding appropriation in Michigan and has one of the highest pass rates in the country for its national licensure exam.
The School of Social Work’s (SSW) Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare has served the profession for 35 years, reaching national and international audiences through subscriptions and digital data base access. SSW Professor Richard Grinnell, Ph.D—Clair & Clarice Platt Jones/Helen Frays Endowed Chair of Social Work Research—is one of the most respected, and widely read authors of social work research texts in the world today.
Established in 1973, CHHS’s Specialty Program in Alcohol and Drug Abuse (SPADA) was the first of its kind in Michigan and the first university-based training clinic in Michigan to address the criminal justice population of substance abusers.