Rotations are at the heart of our program 

The tasks and milestones of the program are intentionally designed and scheduled to foster your independence and growth. There is significant value in gaining early, hands-on exposure, and in giving you the time and depth of clinical experience to graduate ready for genetic counseling practice in any specialty.  

Early Exposure 

In your first semester, three observation days with genetic counselors give you an early window into clinical practice. We recognize that shadowing genetic counselors is an opportunity that some students entering graduate school do not always have access to prior to matriculating. You'll take these alongside the professional-development course ISG 5730: Clinical Practice for Genetic Counselors, where you can reflect on what you're seeing and ask practicing genetic counselors questions you might hesitate to ask in clinic. These early sessions can help build a sense of belonging and confidence before you formally begin rotations. 

Core Rotations 

Starting in January of year one, you'll complete six 10-week core rotations across prenatal, pediatric/general, cancer, cardiovascular, laboratory/research genetics, and an enrichment rotation. There are two spring year 1 rotations, one summer rotation, and three rotations in second year starting in the fall semester.  

Students will exceed the ACGC standard requirement of 50 core participatory cases and gain experience providing genetic counseling across the lifespan. Our clinical affiliates serve socioeconomically and culturally diverse patients and include medical centers, a nonprofit children's hospital, private maternal-fetal medicine practices, oncology settings, and community practices. You'll work with genetic counselors who use a variety of approaches and counseling styles, and encounter the history, management, and psychosocial dimensions of a broad range of genetic conditions. 

Enrichment Rotations: A Signature Strength 

In your second year, you'll complete the 10-week enrichment rotation. Often multidisciplinary, it's designed around your interests to provide experiences beyond the core rotations. 

Here is where you can either explore something brand new, like a clinical setting or type of genetic counseling work you haven’t seen yet; or diver deeper into something that already sparks your interest. Either way, it's built around you and your interests and needs. Through ongoing conversations with your Fieldwork Coordinator throughout your first year, we’ll explore what you’re curious about and we will design the rotation to match. If you have an idea for a placement, we will work our hardest to make it happen. 

That flexibility is intentional, because so much of genetic counseling happens outside the clinic. A genetic counselor's skill set is remarkably wide and translates to an enormous range of settings, and we think it's essential that you graduate having seen that range firsthand. Your enrichment rotation might place you alongside a genetic counselor in a unique role with an interesting career path, or inside an organization that doesn't yet have a genetic counselor at all, where you'll do project-based work and show what our field can offer. 

Because our coursework is online and asynchronous, we aren't limited by geography. We'll look for the right fit wherever it is across the country (or internationally when an opportunity is available) and we'll shape the rotation around your goals, whether that's a few different short experiences or a single 10-week deep dive. 

Increasingly, genetic counselors are proving their value well beyond traditional clinical roles in business, industry, therapeutics, and more. We know how much these experiences matter, and how much of a head start they can give you. Recent enrichment placements have focused on:  

• Industry Rotations – Clinical Genetic Testing Laboratories 
• Patient advocacy organizations 
• Digital medicine and science communication 
• Patient support groups 
• Governmental advocacy 
• Community education 
• Research and laboratory settings 
• Test utilization review 
• Disease-specific specialty clinics 
• Business development 

Where You'll Train 

Most in-person clinical rotations take place across Connecticut, with partner sites in Providence, Rhode Island, and Maine. We make every effort to coordinate placements in a matched student's home state when desired, though adding a new affiliate site to UConn's approved network takes time, so we cannot guarantee home-state placement for rotations. Accepted students join the Program’s Slack channel to connect with classmates about living arrangements, ride-shares, and neighborhoods, faculty about coursework, and leadership for advising, recommendations and notifications about employment opportunities, webinars, study groups, etc.