Concordia College Alabama and The National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care at Tuskegee University have formed a partnership, allowing Concordia students to take a hybrid course in Selma.

The course, called Special Topics in Bioethics and Research Ethics, is a three-credit hour class. It’ll focus on bioethics, public health ethics, health disparities, health equity and public health media and communications ethics.

Concordia plans to find a classroom at the college, where students and people from the community could take the course online. A professor from Tuskegee would teach the course online.

“Right now, what we are trying to see is if there’s any interest,” said Dr. Constance Smith Hendricks, division chair for Health Sciences at Concordia.

Based on a seminar in September, which was open to the community, there is a lot of interest in the community for the class. Hendricks said about 150 people came for the seminar, which focused on a syphilis study at Tuskegee.

“I’d say that of that 150 people, we had 75 community people in the audience that day and they left stating in their evaluations that they were interested,” Hendricks said.

The class would be offered during the next semester, but Hendricks was unsure of the day and time Tuesday.

“The population of people of color is increasing in America but the number of persons working in public health and medical professions is not growing,” said Brian Johnson, the president of Tuskegee University, in a press release. “The academics partnership between Concordia College and the National Bioethics Center will help to increase the number of people of color in vulnerable communities.”

Undergraduate and graduate students taking the course for credit will pay Tuskegee a fee for the three-hour course, according to a press release from Tuskegee.

Residents of all Alabama counties can take the seminar free of charge, but specific guidelines must be followed to receive a certificate for taking the course.

“This is to explore the multifaceted dimensions of bioethics. Bioethics impacts all of our lives whether we realize it or not. When we talk about the genome project, genetics, health care, the lack of health care, accessibility, affordability of quality health, all of those things link together,” Hendricks said. “As we learn what opportunities are out there for us, we can access the resources that Alabama has.”