The Santa Clara University Health Professions program goal is to advise, mentor, support and educate students for meaningful work in healthcare careers. We guide students in their preparation for a myriad of healthcare careers such as dentistry, allopathic and osteopathic medicine, physical therapy, optometry, pharmacy, and many more. To address the significant challenge in finding experience in healthcare settings, post-Covid, we are actively seeking partnerships with healthcare providers who want to host our incredible pre-health students in their clinics. 

We use national acceptance data to health professions programs and guide our students based on this information and best-practices established by our successful students who matriculate to top-tier health professions programs. Given this data, we promote all majors as pre-health majors; there is no “best major” to pursue any health profession. In addition, we set expectations and dispel myths using acceptance statistics and are able to provide individualized advising to our students based on their professional interests. 

Health Professions Faculty Advisor

Brian J. McNelis, Ph.D.

University Health Professions Advisor

Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dr. McNelis has been teaching organic chemistry for 30 years at SCU and has served as an advising resource for pre-health students before taking over the Health Professions Advising position in 2022. Dr. McNelis has earned awards for his teaching, curriculum innovation and advising. His love for teaching and serving SCU students drives his work; in his course development, advising and engaging students in the research lab. The goal for his work as the Health Professions Advisor is to build a first-class advising program, that provides the essential advising, certification training and clinical opportunities that Santa Clara pre-health students need to achieve their healthcare career objectives.

Health Professions Peer Advisors (HPPA) function to provide students with the additional peer support, guidance, and encouragement needed to tackle the challenges related to preparations for health careers. We have built a novel and robust advising system through this advising partnership. Our highly successful pre-health students experience and success is leveraged to benefit students at the early stages of their development at SCU.  In short, our pre-health students are getting it done and want to help other SCU students be successful as well.

There are 16 peer advisors who do peer advising (appointments made using Google Calendar appointment slots in our SCU Health Professions Peer Advising calendar)

Peer advisors provide a number of resources for students:

• 1-on-1 appointments
• Drop In advising
• Workshops
• Mentorship groups

Our peer advisors conduct a mentorship program for first-year pre-health students. We have matched up 6 or 7 students with two peer advisors for support and mentorship. In addition, each peer advisor is assigned to a workgroup, headed by six of Executive Board advisors, working on projects to advance the program in alumni outreach, community building, administration, direction and training of advisors, and additional experiences (clinical experiences, internships etc.).  Our E-board works to further develop and maintain these programs.  

Our advising team and Executive Board have developed “quick guides,” one page documents which outline the key information for a variety of health professions. Our current quick guides include pre-medical, pre-PA, pre-pharmacy, pre-PT, and pre-optometry. The goal of these quick guides is to quickly and easily disseminate information to interested students regarding the variety of healthcare paths that our students are interested in. 

Just as important, is our individualized approach to advising pre-health students. Successful pre-health advising is not found in a generic course lists for programs, but rather working with students to help them find the optimal healthcare career for them and developing their dossier to be successful in their application to specific target schools and health professions programs. Our Peer Advisors help students with career discernment, finding meaningful experience to develop their patient care skills and troubleshooting their course planning.