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K.P. KHALSA: I'm K.P. Khalsa. I'm the lead instructor and curriculum director
for the nutritional therapy program at Portland Community College.
I've been in this field for 40 years. I'm a dietician, a nutritionist, and an herbalist.
I'm currently serving as the president of the American Herbalists Guild.
I've been involved in a wide variety of natural healing kinds of practices
and have several other credentials in the field for that entire 40 years,
so I deal with a lot of different kinds of areas in natural healing
that allow me to bring that expertise to, to create a program
that will be, be very broad in its scope, very holistic and give people the nutritional
part
that will help them plug into that wider world of natural healing.
This is a class for adult learners.
It's a class for motivated people who are able to follow through on their own.
We have two days per month, one intense weekend, where we cover a lot of material.
We have 12 topics over the course of the course.
This Fall term we're going to be dealing with three particular areas.
One of the weekends that we have in store for people during Fall term
is a week on Assessment.
During this program we're going to help people understand
how to determine what's going on with people in their real life;
how we assess their nutritional status, their disease status, their health status
in an overall way to figure out what their needs really are
so we can move along with nutritional therapy.
The Food Therapy weekend is about helping people understand
how to use food as actual therapy.
Not just helping people resolve nutritional deficiencies
and things like vitamin and mineral levels,
but using...that will be included...but also using food as actual therapy.
How do we select particular foods for particular kinds of conditions.
So we'll be going through the A to Z of using therapeutic vegetable, fruits, dietary plants,
to really bring people to that level of optimal health that they're looking for.
People at different stages of their life have different nutritional needs.
In the Life Cycles weekend, we'll be talking about how to optimize diet
and food therapy for people of particular stages in their life.
We'll start out with discussing pediatric populations.
We'll move through middle age. We'll talk about geriatric populations.
And we'll discuss all the ins and outs of those groups of people at various places in
their life.
Not only will we talk about people at different ages, we'll talk about different
other populations of people: by gender, by ethnicity, by culture, by lifestyle.
We want to look at the particular individual needs of people
and look for trends in terms of aspects of their lives.
We also want to look at things about what these populations commonly encounter
as they look to bring nutritional therapy into their life;
things about their employment; their housing; who they live with; are they living with a
family;
can they cook on their own; do they have transportation;
how can they select food; are there income issues.
So, all these non therapeutic criteria that we bring in to help understand
how to help these people optimize nutritionally
and still take advantage of the best health they can possibly have.
Before a student enrolls in this class it's a great idea for them
to have some familiarity with natural healing concepts,
some sort of an affinity for natural healing in some way, or even just a great interest
in the topic.
We do offer a course called "Biochemical Foundations" that each student
has the opportunity to take if they do need some backup in that kind of area.
People are going to have to take some anatomy and physiology.
Many people who are going to take this class will already have taken anatomy and physiology,
which is pretty straightforward and offered in a number of different places.
So, that can be taken any time during the course of the class or in advance.
Otherwise, it's just show up and go
to work.
Well, the things that people enjoy about this class often actually
turn out to be the most challenging.
This is a class that requires people to keep up with their reading,
to stay attuned to their class requirements, to our lectures, to our class discussions,
and really be ready to participate in class.
The great thing about this kind of structure where you have a weekend
and then a month on your own is that it's so flexible for you to be able to be...
to do your work as you need to do that.
So, we all know that adult learners have family issues and other things going on,
so they may have a light study week, then the next week they can, they can make that
up.
So, people who are more used to traditional educational opportunities
where they're sitting in a class three days a week with a lecture,
and they take an exam every other, every other Friday, may find themselves challenged
by the need to really stay focused on their material and make it through the material.
This is a college level course. It is a career preparation course.
People will be expected to perform to a high standard that will give them a credential
that they can go out and then actually use in the real world. So they do have to keep
up.
That said, it's not onerous. People will be able to do it.
We've been doing these kinds of things for a long time.
We know the kinds of things that will help people through.
And people will find that they'll get together in study groups, they'll connect with each
other,
and they'll really make nutritional therapy a part of their life.
The class is oriented toward nutritional therapists
who will be establishing their own practices in some way and acting as consultants,
but that may be quite variable, not necessarily putting out a shingle and opening up their
own office.
They may work in group practices. They may work in a hospital setting.
They may consult on their own. But just in the practice management area, tremendous opportunity.
But that's one tiny slice for nutritional therapy.
People could work in the dietary industry with food.
They could be...they could work with import/export. They could work in quality control.
They could be working in nutritional education. Writing materials. Promotional materials.
They could be doing public education.
They could work in the dietary supplement industry and,
and apply all those kinds of ideas to that.
We do hear from the industry that there is a need for people with this kind of education
who actually work with boots on the ground, real work in the real office.
They may work in a warehouse. They may sit behind a computer all day.
But they're designing products, they're designing packaging,
they're using their expertise to meet this new need of the 21st century.
PCC is really a very top notch school, very well organized.
The CLIMB program is centered around health care professions.
They've been doing it for a long time. They're very good at what they do.
PCC is a school with very good resources.
You're going to find the, the kinds of technological resources that we need in the classroom
to really create up to the minute learning experience for people.
And all of that for a tuition that's substantially more affordable than many other opportunities,
plus you get this education in a package that's suitable for adult learners.
So: convenient schedule, maximum exposure to cutting edge kinds of ideas
for a very reasonable tuition. It's a great package.
The nutritional therapy program at PCC is designed to create certified practitioners.
The certificate that we issue is at the end of the four academic terms of material.
We've worked out the whole thing so that there's a very nicely defined career path.
You go through your 12 weekends over the course of a year.
You do your, your classroom work.
You take the certification exam from the professional organization.
And you're ready to go.