Nutrition Education Certification

Graduate Certificate Overview

The nutrition education certification program is designed for students who have earned a bachelor’s degree and are interested in expanding their work to include nutrition education or for professionals who are involved with creating programs and implementing policy to address the obesity epidemic.

This certification is closely aligned to the Master of Science in Health Promotion Management which educates students to be leaders in the field of health promotion. Nutrition factors are linked to seven of the ten leading causes of death in the United States. Further, the obesity epidemic has an impact on six of the leading causes of death in the United States, and this epidemic transcends all age groups. Nutrition education is a necessary component of health promotion, and consumers are in need of well-prepared professionals to provide reliable nutrition information and set reasonable, effective nutrition policy.

Select courses in this certificate program will be offered online throughout the year; however other courses will be offered in the classroom; therefore this program is considered to be a “hybrid” program for students. For a complete listing of online and traditional classroom courses, please contact the School of Education, Teaching, and Health..

Admission to the Program

Applications must include transcripts of all college work demonstrating a cumulative grade point average of 3.00 (on a 4.00 scale) in the last 60 hours of undergraduate work and in all graduate work. In addition, applicants are required to submit a statement of purpose and two letters of recommendation.

Degree Requirements:

• 18 credit hours of graduate work
• Completed in 1-2 years

Required Core Courses

• HFIT 645: Nutrition for Health Fitness (3 credits)
• HFIT 550: Programming for Health Promotion (3)
• HFIT 615: Lifecycle Nutrition (3)
• HFIT 570: Strategies for Weight Control (3)

Elective Courses (select 2 courses from the following):

• HFIT 610: Applied Physiology and Testing (4 credits)
• HFIT 540: Health Communication (3)
• HFIT 575: Global Health (3)
• HFIT 580: Health Policy and Behavior Change (3)
• EDU 620: Theories of Educational Psychology and Human Development (3)

For more information, please call 202-885-6275 or e-mail healthfitness@american.edu