Dear BUSPH Community,

I am both honored and excited to begin serving as our School’s Interim Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Thank you, Dean Hyder, for this opportunity.

As I begin this new role and work with our community to advance and innovate within our educational programs, I want to also take a moment to thank former Associate Dean for Education, Lisa Sullivan, for all she has done over the past two decades in this role. She has been most helpful during this transition period, and I am very appreciative for all she has done over the years for our School. Thank you, Lisa!

Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of serving in a variety of leadership and educational roles here at BUSPH that have given me a deep appreciation for our academic programs and our remarkable faculty, staff, students, and alumni.  To give you a little background, I served as Interim Chair of the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management (HLPM) during 2025 and have been Associate Chair since 2023. For much of the past decade, I have directed the Healthcare Management Certificate and our School’s six dual degree programs. I have also taught in the MPH core and our certificate programs, including courses in Strategic Management, Operations Management, and Leadership and Management in Public Health. These experiences will undoubtedly serve as the foundation for taking on this new role, but I am especially looking forward to the many conversations ahead about how we can continue to reshape and expand our educational degrees, programs, and offerings.

During the coming year, I intend to focus on several key priority areas. While these will certainly continue to take shape with your input, our School must focus on a manageable number of priorities that can help pave our way forward given the unique challenges public health faces today. In the near term, some of the areas I will be focusing on developing strategic and operational plans for include admissions/enrollment, revitalizing the in-residence MPH program based on the coming recommendations from the Education Taskforce, identifying and creating new in-person and online educational offerings that will attract new learners, enhancing our School’s adoption of artificial intelligence within our courses and degree programs, and engaging new partners to help develop our practice-based course content and offerings. I look forward to engaging with our faculty, staff, our students, and the many different BUSPH and University offices in developing a set of strategies and plans that we can work toward in the coming year.

In closing, I want to offer that the main reason I am so energized by this new role is because of how much people care about education and teaching within our community. I feel the same way. I encourage you all to think about ways we can engage our current students and reach new ones. When you have an idea, please call, text, or e-mail me. Let’s talk about it!

So much more soon.

Best,

Chris
louisc@bu.edu

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