Members of the Center for Interprofessional Education’s Student Advisory Committee organized social media takeovers to reach student audiences, highlight their work and share opportunities for involvement.
Students play an important role within the Center for Interprofessional Education. They take on leadership roles within the Student Advisory Committee (SAC), where they enable student-led IPE efforts and work to ensure students are part of the driving force towards the future of interprofessional education and collaborative care at the University of Michigan. This year, the group decided that they wanted to explore new ways of educating University of Michigan students about their work, so they turned to social media.
“We wanted to do a social media takeover to showcase and advertise the interprofessional education opportunities here at the University of Michigan for students,” said Tommy Lau, a dental student who serves as a SAC co-chair. “We feel that there is no better way to elicit the thought of ‘wow, this is cool. I want to be part of this.’ than when students see what other students on campus are doing through social media.”
The team settled on two approaches — a broad strategy that would target U-M students from any discipline through the popular @umichstudents Instagram account, and a more targeted approach that would reach students already connected to a health sciences college or school. This would allow them to connect with new groups of students who may not already be familiar with IPE and its opportunities for students studying at U-M.
View the IPE SAC 2023 story highlight on the @umichstudents Instagram account
For the @umichstudents takeover, the SAC co-chairs structured their content over the course of four days, taking over the account’s story from October 30-November 2, 2023. Each day featured a different topic:
Day 1: Introduction to SAC and IPE. This allowed students to get to know SAC as a team and how they support the mission of IPE innovation and improvement at U-M.
Day 2: IPE student organizations. This allowed viewers to understand how they can get involved with the student-led work at our institution, while highlighting the work that is underway.
Day 3: Student spotlight day. This allowed U-M students to understand how our students utilize IPE within their day to day to support their professional education and development.
Day 4: How to get involved. This was a call to action for students to take what they have seen over the past couple of days and feel inspired to take the next steps within IPE!
“We really wanted to highlight all of the amazing work students and members of the Center for IPE do to make IPE great at the University of Michigan,” shared Taylor Bringard, a nursing student and SAC co-chair. “We feel the selected topics in the takeover really encompassed a true demonstration of IPE at the University of Michigan.”
“We also wanted to demonstrate these efforts on a much higher scale than before,” added Natalya Salganik, pharmacy student and SAC co-chair. “We hoped that students watching the takeover could understand how IPE can empower them to be a change agent within our institution, and beyond.”
Introductory message from Blake Hardin, medical student and SAC co-chair
The group also completed a takeover on the @umichmedschool Instagram account, featuring perspectives from three medical students. This one-day takeover offered a glimpse into what it’s like to be a medical student learning about IPE and its importance. This takeover reached an engaged audience of current and prospective medical students, reinforcing that IPE is an important part of their curriculum. SAC hopes to do other targeted social media takeovers in the future to continue to reach new audiences and educate their fellow students about IPE.
View the IPE story highlight on @umichmedschool’s Instagram account