Dancing Students Toward Health Care Career Opportunities

“My goal is impact,” explained King, an LDI Senior Fellow and Wharton School Professor of Health Care Management. “As students enter medical school, nursing school, and other health care career paths, they often get bogged down in the technical side of medicine. I want them to remember—and live—the importance of social connection.”

“There is a science to creating connection, and that is what we do in this course,” she continued. “Whether it is through shared activities and synchronization in dance or by creating psychological safety through trust-building, we took the best of network science and brought it to life. For a class to be memorable, it has to have emotional resonance, which can come from joy, shared struggle, or deep connection.”

King was wrapping up the inaugural semester of “Leading the Health Care Workforce,” a Wharton Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course that brought together 32 University of Pennsylvania undergraduates and 30 West Philadelphia high school students from the University-Assisted Community Schools (UACS) network. The mix was intentional: a semester long exercise in shared learning, mentoring, and professional networking among students already interested in future careers in health care.

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