Dear Colleagues,

I hope that everyone has had an enjoyable and restful summer. A warm welcome to our new community members: students, staff, and faculty. We are delighted you have joined us. To our returning community members, a heartfelt welcome back.

As we embark on this new semester, I am writing a series of notes to provide an overview of School functions and operations, with links to relevant resources, to introduce the School to the new members of our community, and to hopefully serve as a useful refresher for long-time community members.

Everything we do at the school is informed by our Strategy Map. We refresh this every five years, and the School is actively working on our next iteration to be launched at the start of 2025. The Strategy Map builds on our mission and core purpose and articulates measures, metrics, targets, and tactics that guide what we do. Each year, I report on our progress towards these targets in our January State of the School presentation at School Assembly for faculty and staff, and in February or March at our State of the School presentation for students. All past School Assembly notes, including these presentations, are available here.

Now onto school structure. We have built the school to mirror our core purpose: Think. Teach. Do. For the Health of all. That means that our senior leadership team is structured with an Associate Dean who leads each of our core areas of Education, Research, Practice, and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice. Rounding out the Associate Dean group is our Associate Dean for Administration, responsible for the operational and financial well-being of the school.

A bit about each of these groups.

Our Education team, under the leadership of Dean Lisa Sullivan, works towards advancing our aspiration of innovative and excellent education. Our Education team comprises five units: Admissions Office, Career and Practicum Office, Educational Initiatives Team, Graduate Student Life, and the Registrar’s Office. These units work to provide ongoing support throughout the academic lifecycle of each student at SPH, from the time they are admitted to BUSPH to the time they graduate. Additionally, our Education group works closely with our faculty and staff from our academic departments on the full work of our educational programs, from curriculum development to educational technology, equitable and inclusive pedagogy implementation, and the establishment of science-based curricula that combine foundational, interdisciplinary learning and practical training. The Education team oversees a full suite of resources that are available to help all our faculty and staff involved in teaching. In addition to our degrees and programs, our faculty and staff work to offer lifelong educational opportunities for everyone.

Our Research and Faculty Development team aims to support our faculty and research staff in developing the scholarship that leads our Think agenda. Under the leadership of Dean Michael McClean, the Faculty Resources Office regularly engages with the School’s academic departments, other units in the school, and relevant partners at the University level to ensure we have the right infrastructure to advance our scholarship and research, and to make sure that faculty are supported towards success in their career. The Faculty Resources Office guides faculty promotions through the system and oversees a full suite of faculty development activities. Resources and operating guidelines are all outlined in our Faculty Handbook. As part of the work of the research team, the idea hub serves as a resource to help develop research and programmatic work in partnership with the private sector. The idea hub offers support for faculty, staff, and students who are interested in such partnerships to generate opportunities for innovative scholarship outside of our regular government-sponsored grants.

Under the leadership of our Dean of Practice and Activist Lab Director, Craig Andrade, we aim to give life to our Do mission through engagement in the practice of public health. The mission of the Activist Lab is to be a catalyst for bold public health practice that disrupts injustice with compassion. In that vein, Dean Andrade works closely with all units of the School, and offers resources and programs to support advocacy and practice being done by faculty, staff, and students.

We are committed to infusing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice throughout our work, doing so under the leadership of Dean Yvette Cozier. Dean Cozier and the DEIJ team work closely with all units in the school to embed the principles and goals of DEIJ within our Education, Research, and Practice portfolios, in our classrooms, research, hiring, retention, staff, and faculty development, and all aspects of student engagement.

Finally, under the leadership of Dean Ira Lazic, our Administration and Finance team supports the School’s mission by delivering programs and connecting our community members to resources, people, and systems that are core to the School’s success. Responsible for human resources, operational excellence, safety, infrastructure as well as financial stability, the Administration and Finance team, in close collaboration with all School departments, established standard operating procedures that guide our work processes and ensure that we adhere to best practices outlined in both our Staff and our Faculty Handbooks.

And finally, the Office of the Dean has three units relevant to central functions: Marketing and Communications, Development and Alumni Relations, and the Dean’s Office Executive Team. These units communicate the work of the school, ensure our ongoing engagement with the world, connect with alumni, and identify resources to advance the School’s mission. The Offices of the Dean also run our Public Health Conversations, programs that engage speakers representing a range of perspectives and identities in informative and thought provoking discussions.

I hope this quick overview is of use to all. As I noted at the outset, much work of the School is done at the Department and unit level, so not discussed here. I hope to have highlighted the often less-seen work of the central administrative units, to the end of supporting all as best as possible. I shall in the next communication in this series write about how we communicate at the School.

Warmly,

Sandro

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor
sgalea@bu.edu

 

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