In the Master of Science of Public Health programme, you can choose between different options in the third semester:
- Electives within the Public Health programme
- Project oriented work (internship) – 15 ECTS
- Individual Study Activity (2,5 or 5 ECTS)
- Electives in other programmes at SDU or other Danish universities
- Study abroad
Important: you must obtain exactly 30 ECTS in the third semester - not more nor less. This is especially important to keep in mind if you decide to look for electives in other programmes than your own.
Electives within the Public Health programme
A number of elective courses are offered by the program itself.
Remember that you must also achieve 30 ECTS if you follow the program's own elective courses.
You can see which elective courses are offered in the fall on this page. The page is updated around May, but you can also look back at course descriptions from previous semesters (fall) to get a preliminary overview.
Project oriented work (internship)
An internship cannot comprise more than 15 ECTS and must thus be combined with electives. See the guidelines for project oriented work here.
Individual Study Activity
An Individual Study Activity (ISA) consists of individual project work based on a general public health problem of your own own choice. The ECTS value can be either 2.5 ECTS or 5 ECTS.
Many students choose an ISA if, due to electives from other studies or similar, they have difficulty in getting 30 ECTS.Please note that an ISA must be approved in advance. You can only be registered for the course once the project has been approved. You can read more about this in the course description.
Electives in other programmes at SDU or other Danish Universities
If you wish to take elective courses at other programmes and/or universities, it is your own responsibility to identify the courses you wish to attend.
The elective courses must be relevant to your programme and must not overlap in content with courses you have already completed as part of your programme (including compulsory courses and specialization courses).
You must also remember to apply for pre-approval of credit transfer (pre-approved credit).
If the Study Board grants pre-approval, you must yourself apply for admission to the courses, i.e. ensure that you are enrolled in them. When applying for enrolment at another university, you must attach the pre-approval from the Study Board for the specific courses you wish to attend.
Applications for pre-approval must be submitted to the Study Board via SPOC. It is important that you attach the course descriptions to your application.
Please be aware that you may only apply for pre-approval of credit transfer for a maximum of two elective courses more than the number of ECTS credits you intend to complete at another programme and/or university. This does not apply to applications for pre-approval of credit transfer for elective courses at foreign universities.
The meeting schedule for the Study Board, as well as a link to the database where previous pre-approvals are available, can be found here.
Study abroad
Study abroad is arranged through SDU International. The courses that you wish to take abroad must be pre-approved as described above.
Read more about your options as a Public Health student here.