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2024-2025 Undergraduate & Graduate Catalog

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Master of Athletic Training

Athletic trainers (ATs) are highly qualified, multiskilled health care professionals who collaborate with physicians to provide preventative services, emergency care, clinical diagnosis, therapeutic intervention, and rehabilitation of injuries and medical conditions.

Professional training education in athletic training uses a competency-based approach in both the classroom and clinical settings. Using a medical-based education model, athletic training students are educated to provide comprehensive patient care in five domains of clinical practice: prevention; clinical evaluation and diagnosis; immediate and emergency care; treatment and rehabilitation; and organization and professional health and well-being. The educational requirements for CAATE-accredited athletic training education programs include acquisition of knowledge, skills, and clinical abilities along with a broad scope of foundational behaviors of professional practice. Students complete an extensive clinical learning requirement that is embodied in the clinical integration proficiencies (professional, practice-oriented outcomes) as identified in the athletic training education competencies.

This program is a professional program in athletic training that will have two routes of entry:

  1. Students may earn the MAT through admission directly to the MAT program. This route would be for students who have earned a bachelor's degree and meet all the preadmissions/admissions requirements. These students would apply during the fall semester of the year before they plan on beginning the program. If accepted, they would start during the fall semester and have two full years to complete the master's degree.
  2. Students may begin an accelerated combined degree program in their first year at GVSU that will award a B.S. in an approved undergraduate major (i.e. exercise science with an emphasis in healthcare or allied health science with a general emphasis) after three and a half years and an MAT when completed after five years. These students will meet all the preadmissions/admissions requirements and apply to the MAT program during the fall semester of their third year. If accepted, the student will then start the MAT curriculum the following fall semester and complete the professional program during their fourth and fifth years. These students will have earned the B.S. in CES upon completion of the fall semester of the fourth year.

All students, regardless of their entry point will go through the program as a cohort and will take the same courses in the same sequence. All students will be required to be full-time students to meet the didactic and clinical demands of the program.

Pre-Admission Requirements

The following prerequisite coursework must be met for applicants to be considered for admittance to the GVSU Master of Athletic Training program. Failure to meet these requirements will result in the removal of the candidate from the application pool.

  • Course equivalents, for all courses listed below, are accepted from other institutions.
  • All prerequisites must be taken for letter grades.
  • For each course, a grade of C or higher is required.
  • The prerequisites and undergraduate degree must be completed by the first day of classes of the professional program (applications will be accepted for students still in the progress of completing coursework).

Required Coursework:

Suggested Coursework (not required for admission) *:

*unless in the combined degree

Program Requirements

The degree is comprised of 62 credits.

*Students must have at least one immersive clinical experience at four credits in the second year but may elect to have a non-immersive clinical experience the opposite semester at three credits. If a student takes three credits of ATH 626 in fall, then they would be required to take four credits of ATH 628 (immersive) in winter and vice-versa.

Suggested Order of Coursework

Year One

Year Two


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