Looking Back at the Year.
This is the last Dean’s Note of 2016; we shall, after this, take a break until Sunday, January 1, 2017. To end the year, I thought I would look back at the work that we have all done together during 2016. In so many ways, this has been a fantastic year, even as we have been buffeted by the broader political ill-winds of change. As I mentioned at the November School Assembly, I see our collective task as making a great School even better. And together this year we have worked to improve our School at every level towards the goal of ever-greater engagement with the aspirations of public health. Looking back on the year, from the evolution of our Strategic Plan, to the launch of new projects, to the addition of new faculty and the strengthening of our core operations, it seems to me that we are well-positioned to seize the opportunities 2017 will bring “to improve the health of local, national, and international populations, particularly the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable, through excellence and innovation in education, research, and service.”
This year was very much marked by our 40th anniversary. During our four decades, SPH has grown from a program within the Department of Socio-Medical Sciences and Community Medicine, with a first class of 54 MPH students and 20 non-degree students, to a top-10 school of public health with more than 1,000 degree candidates enrolled in our program. As our numbers have increased, so has our “extended family” of alumni and friends, which spans more than 100 countries. To mark our anniversary, we made a concerted effort to reach out to this growing community through a series of 40 events and dinners around the country and the world. This program of events allowed us to connect with about 2,000 members of our local, national, and global network on two levels: we spread the word about the extraordinary work our School is doing while at the same time cultivating a deeper engagement with our graduates who have mobilized their SPH education towards creating healthier populations. Our extended community is as broad and diverse as the interests of public health itself, full of ideas, energy, and the desire to innovate. Members of our School community are increasingly in leadership roles on the local, national, and global stage, and it was an extraordinary privilege to hear their stories. Our alumni were, to a person, enthusiastic about further opportunities to engage with the School. We have been building a vibrant School community that provides such opportunities, from our Signature Events, to our department and center-based events, to our weekly and monthly communications, to our emerging Population Health Exchange. As a result of these, and more, initiatives, we have seen more and more members of our extended community re-engage with the School, strengthening our now nearly 10,000-strong community of alumni, current students, staff, faculty, and friends.
This year also saw the culmination of our Strategic Planning exercise. In 2015, we launched a Strategic Thinking Initiative to help us identify the critical public health issues of our time, find opportunities to engage these issues, and determine how best to pursue our aspirations. To that end, we convened a Strategic Thinking Group, led by and comprised of faculty, staff, students, and alumni. This group organized a series of roundtables and School-wide consultations designed to help us refine our ideas in pursuit of a broad strategic vision for the School. We began 2016 by publishing a report that distilled the ideas produced by the Strategic Thinking process into just such a vision. The report detailed avenues for further development in the areas of scholarship, diversity and inclusion, communications, infrastructure, and more. The Governing Council then took up the report in 2016 and, over a series of sessions, developed our Strategy Map that summarizes our Mission, Values, Core Purpose, Audacious Goal, Strategic Research Directions, Guiding Principles, and 10 strategic imperatives accompanied by metrics and tactics. We subsequently discussed this at an all-school assembly and at our annual School-wide retreat, resulting in further ideas about tactical approaches we can take to push our Strategic Plan forward over the coming years. We shall revisit and refine these ideas together in the coming year.
We have since launched a number of new projects informed by this Strategic Plan. Our redesigned curriculum, for example, has resulted in a program of study that reflects changes in student demographics, new teaching methods, and an up-to-date understanding of the public heath work force. In November, we officially launched our Student Alumni Mentoring Program (StAMP), designed to pair current MPH candidates with alumni who are in a position to provide advice and guidance. This program aspires to be a resource for students and to engage alums looking for ways to stay connected with their School and with the emerging future of public health. We have also increased opportunities for alumni engagement through our new Population Health Exchange (PHX), which will create a space for lifelong learning where professionals in a variety of disciplines can engage with a broad range of learning opportunities at the cutting-edge of population heath thinking. Finally, in a time when the mission of public health is perhaps more crucial than ever, we have redoubled our efforts to translate science and “do,” the third virtue of our “think, teach, do” core purpose. Our Activist Lab allows our faculty, students, and staff to root their scholarship in a “hands-on” engagement with these conditions, inspiring us to innovate in search of constructive solutions for real-world problems. Building on this theme of immediate, real-world engagement, our Public Health Post provides a platform for academics, journalists, and other thought leaders to comment daily on issues that affect the health of populations, towards the goal of nudging a population health focus to the center of the national debate.
As we have been developing these new programs, we have been building the foundations on which the School runs and operates. Core to this purpose has been welcoming a number of new faculty to SPH. These outstanding scholars include two new department chairs. Professor Michael Stein, our new chair of health law, policy, and management comes to us from Brown University, Professor Patricia Hibberd, our new chair of global health, comes from Harvard/Massachusetts General Hospital, and we have just announced the appointment of our own Professor Josée Dupuis, as chair of biostatistics. All three are outstanding leaders in their own fields of inquiry, and, as part of the School leadership team, will be involved in moving us collectively forward towards achieving the goals we have laid out for ourselves in our Strategy Map. We also welcomed a number of new faculty, all of whom are leading scholars and educators, and who will bring a fresh perspective that both informs the larger intellectual tapestry of SPH and contributes to our growing and innovative educational programs.
A running theme of 2016 has been our efforts to strengthen our core operations, improve departmental infrastructure, and build on what we already do well. We have, for example, reorganized our Office of Communications, furthering our mission of informing the national and global conversation. Our communications team has fully consolidated our award-winning print and online media, and launched a reconfiguration of these materials, to maintain clarity of messaging and consistency of aesthetic. Our Development and Alumni Relations team had a record-setting year, capped spectacularly last November at our 40th Anniversary Gala. The efforts of our DAR team have done much to raise the visibility of our School and build support for our current and future progress. Finally, we have worked towards greater efficiency in the area of central administration, striving to create infrastructure that can most effectively support the activities and aspirations of our School.
Last, but perhaps most important, even as we are making progress in all the areas above, we continue to do the work of the School. Our faculty published 1,034 papers in 2016, taught 287 courses, were engaged in over 300 extramurally funded projects. Our staff worked tirelessly to help make all of this happen, serving as the backbone of all the School does. All of this adds up to a year of remarkable work at a remarkable institution. What is more, for the past nearly 365 days, we have managed to celebrate the history of the School while at the same time laying the groundwork for the future.
With the above in mind, I did not want to let the year end without once more saying how grateful I am for the work of all who have lent their energy and talent to supporting the ongoing adventure that is the life of this School. In my first draft of this Dean’s Note, I started naming individuals to whom I wanted to give thanks, but then thought better of it because my Note was becoming simply a list of people, extending into the hundreds. But my thanks do indeed extend that far. Thank you to all members of our faculty and staff who do the work of the School. Thank you to all our students who make our work worthwhile and who enrich the School community during their time with us. Thank you to our alumni and friends who remain engaged with the School and support us in countless ways. Thank you to the School leadership team, including the Dean’s Advisory Board and the Governing Council, who elevate the School’s vision, direction, and execution. And thank you to everyone who reads this note and who engages with our intellectual community from near and far.
Next month, we will begin the countdown to the School’s 50th anniversary. Sitting at the end of 2016 I am indeed struck by how much work is still to be done, by the challenges that we shall face as a consequence of the swirling political headwinds, and by a recognition of the ever-greater responsibility that a great School of Public Health bears in such times. And yet, it is difficult to sit where I sit without a sense of nagging and unshakable optimism. When I consider what we have accomplished together, I am indeed looking forward to 2017.
I hope everyone has a terrific holiday break. Until the New Year.
Warm regards,
Sandro
Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean and Professor, Boston University School of Public Health
Twitter: @sandrogalea
Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Eric DelGizzo for his contribution to this Dean’s Note and for the contribution of about 250 faculty, 250 staff, 1,100 students, 8,500 alumni, and countless friends of the School for all that they do, every day, to further the mission of the School.
Previous Dean’s Notes are archived at: https://www.bu.edu/sph/tag/deans-note/