In May, Miami University’s regional campuses will graduate their first class in one of the fastest-growing industries in the country.

The Health Information Technology bachelor’s degree is one of several four-year degrees that will be available exclusively at Miami’s regional campuses in Hamilton, Middletown and Voice of America in West Chester Twp. The degrees are a byproduct of Miami transitioning of its regional campuses into their own academic division.

This transition has been going on for several years and the university’s Senate will discuss later this month matters of logistics and personnel — including the naming of the new division. In the meantime, work on the ground is already well under way to meet the major goals of the division, to give the campuses greater flexibility to respond to the changing economic conditions of the community.

“The mission of public universities now includes directly contributing to job growth and economic development, and rightly so,” said G. Michael Pratt, dean of the regional campuses, in a recent State of the Schools address for the Hamilton Rotary Club.

“While the Oxford campus is choosing to hold its current size and enrollment, the regional campuses have no such limitations,” he said. “This gives us an advantage to grow our size, our enrollment, and our academic breadth.”

Part of this is to allow the branch campuses to offer more four-year degree programs that are unavailable on the main campus in Oxford.

“Less than five years ago, (the regional campuses) offered just two bachelor degrees, in Nursing and Engineering Technology,” Pratt said. “Today we have five, and more are in the pipeline.”

One of the new bachelors degrees is in Health Information Technology, which just celebrated its first anniversary and will be graduating its first students in May, designed to graduate students capable of working in one of the fastest growing fields in the country. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of health information technicians is expected to increase by 20 percent, or grow to 207,600 positions, through 2018.

“Medical organizations are being required to move to electronic health records,” said Professor Cathy Bishop-Clark. “Computers are pervasive everywhere, but the medical field has been lagging a bit behind.”

A lot of this has to do with security and confidentiality issues, but “the hope is that once we infuse technology into the medical field, not only will costs improve but so will the quality of care.”

The degree was designed by both the Computer and Information Technology staff, of which Bishop-Clark is a part, and the Nursing Department.

“It gives people an option to work in health care who don’t want to work directly with patients,” Bishop-Clark said. “The program is offered only at the Miami University Regionals, and you get a unique mix of technical, medical and liberal arts education.”

The degree has proven to be a hit, already attracting 120 students, some of them, like Lindenwald resident Mike Farmer, opting to go this route rather than nursing.

Farmer, a Marine Corps veteran originally from Fairfax County, Va., moved to Hamilton a few years ago to be closer to his wife’s family, had first enrolled in the nursing program.

While in the Marines, Farmer was trained in corrections, but had volunteered to be part of a local rescue squad during the last years of his service.

“When my time was getting ready to come to a close, I decided I didn’t want to go work in a prison or law enforcement,” he said, “so I took a job in the emergency room in the ER at Camp Lejeune.”

Eventually, he got to work directly with patients and qualified for his EMT license, but that did not transfer when he moved his family to Hamilton, so he enrolled at the Hamilton Campus in the nursing program. As he started going through the prerequisite courses to enter the program, he got wind of the Health Information Technology program, and felt that was a better fit.

“I love computers,” he said. “I have all of the gadgets and toys, and so I thought this would be a good way to combine computers with my medical background.

“What I hope I’m bringing to the table is to help find a better way to help the whole population of the United States,” he said, “but if I had to pin-point one area, it would be to work in the Veterans Administration or Department of Defense system.

“We have become such a mobile nation, we’re hearing stories about people waiting a long time for health care because their records are somewhere else,” he said. “It’s about creating one universal system to serve everyone better.”

“As we build new and different bachelor’s degrees, recruit new and better students, offer strengthened pathways for students to complete degrees in Oxford, and provide more education opportunities for local citizens,” Pratt said, “we are developing a system more responsive to our own needs, the needs of Miami University as a whole, and the external forces currently shaping higher education.”