Answer to Question #5932 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"

I am currently an ELT (engineering laboratory technician) in the US Navy. I currently have three years left in the military. I understand that the field of health physics has a huge diversity when it comes to radiation health and detection. It seems as if the Navy ELT is a mix between the majority of the subcategories of health physics (with water chemistry control thrown in the mix). I have been searching for a field that is related to my job which is satisfying and pays well and found your Web site. I have found it very informative. I have two questions:

1. I have heard of many "navy college" opportunities in the military where you can get a variety of degrees from various colleges. I do not know which colleges are availible but I am pretty sure it is not any of the colleges that are listed in Health Physics Education Reference Book - 2005-2006. Should I take advantage of the Navy's college program and get a degree pertaining to health physics from a college while I am in the Navy (since the Navy pretty much pays for everything) or just wait until I get out and attend a more qualified college that I can pay for with my GI bill?
2. Another option that I have thought of is to just take basic (transferable credits) courses through a Navy college program while I am in the Navy and then transfer them over to a better college when I separate from the military.
3. In my search of a job related to a Navy ELT's line of work I discovered a Web site that describes the salary and job description of a radiation physicist. I have not found any other related sites that specifically use this title. Is this career more closely related to health physics or medical physics?

I appreciate your questions. Many individuals are in a similar situation to the one that you have described but unfortunately they often fail to plan for the future and eventually squander their opportunities. Your proactive approach will benefit you in many ways.

The decision about which university to attend is nontrivial. Oftentimes the reputation of the program at the university you attend is as important as, if not more important than, the degree itself. Reputations are built upon long-term solid quality programs which reflect the educational and research efforts of the faculty. These are explicitly verified by independent programmatic accreditation programs like the accreditation offered by theAccreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The quality of the general education offered by an institution is verified by regional accreditation programs. One must be aware that regional accreditation is a broad brush with little detail, whereas programmatic accreditation is kind of "in your face" looking through exacting detail of the individual program. The sum of all these things communicates to prospective students and eventually to perspective employers of alumni that the course of study undertaken to obtain a specific degree at the bare minimum exceeded a standard set of requirements with respect to providing a quality education, relative to the "industrial" environment pertinent to the program, and agreed to as adequate by a consensus of stake holders in that particular arena.

To specifically answer your questions:

1. I will paraphrase your first question: Which kind of college program should I pursue?
   Only you can answer that question, but what you should try to imagine before you answer that question is where do I want to be in five years, 10 years, and 25 years? You should also be considering which types of organizations you would to be associated with: nuclear power plants, consulting, national laboratories, hospitals, or universities. You may speculate on the type of mobility a particular degree might offer and you determine the area of research specialization at a particular university and determine if that is consistent with your goals. This latter item is probably more important at the graduate level than the undergraduate level.
   
   
2. I will paraphrase your second question: Is it useful to just take basic courses?
   The answer to that question can be direct. Yes, this can be helpful and move you along more rapidly regardless of which program or which college you ultimately attend. However, not all classes are universally transferable. The best advice is to pick a target university from which you ultimately want to earn a degree and start speaking to the faculty in the program that you wish to attend to develop a plan that will be the most efficient. Specifically ask them about particular classes offered by other institutions and obtain in writing a memo describing the particular aspects of your dialogue. Generally you will not go wrong with knocking out university-level calculus and chemistry and biology requirements. You should be aware that most universities either cap the allowable number of transfer courses or specifically require that some fraction of the credits earned and applied to earning a degree must be from the degree granting institution.
   
   
3. What is a radiation physicist?
   Well, I call myself a radiation physicist or health physicist alternately. I'm a certified health physicist so there is little doubt about my meaning when I use the term radiation physicist, at least in my own mind. It looks like the Web site you reference was linked to the term medical physicists. It is feasible that medical physicists may also refer to themselves as a radiation physicists. It may be argued that both medical physics and health physics are different branches of radiation physics, but the terminology is rather ambiguous and certainly not standardized.
   
   Health physics is that profession dedicated to the protection of humans and their environment from the harmful affects of radiation while providing for its beneficial uses.
   
   Medical physics is that profession concerned with developing irradiation treatment plans for patients with various types of cancers with the goal of destroying the tumor tissue or minimizing the pain associated with the cancer.
   
   Alternately, they may concern themselves with developing and expanding medical diagnostic resolution by employing radiation or radioactive materials. Although they are clearly different professions, they share a great deal of similarity. There are clearly many people well trained in both subdisciplines who carry out both functions for particular institutions. However, the vast majority of professionals in either discipline, unless driven by unsubstantiated arrogance, would readily proclaim that they are not adequately educated to instantly carry out the duties of the opposite sister-profession.