‘I Learn From Them as Much as They Learn From Me’.
‘I Learn From Them as Much as They Learn From Me’
Veronika Wirtz, professor of global health, earned a Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching for her dedication to engaging students and integrating her research and advising work into the classroom.
Veronika Wirtz, professor of global health, joins a select group of her School of Public Health peers as the winner of a prestigious Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, one of the University’s highest honors for faculty.
Of her approach to teaching, Wirtz said, “It’s not that you just augment their knowledge, you want them to change, you want to inspire them to become better,” an expansive perspective that reveals why one student called her “the best instructor I’ve had in my college career.”
Each semester, Wirtz requires her new students to complete a mandatory pre-course survey that asks what each student wants out of their public health education. She asks about career goals, their academic intentions, their expectations for the course, their optimal learning style, and what techniques have worked in the past. She says she does this even before she meets them in person, because she wants to know much more about them than just their names.
“I think you can only teach if you genuinely engage, if you build a generous connection with students,” Wirtz said. “I really treat them as my future colleagues, so I engage with them as my eventual peers because I want to create future public health professionals and leaders.”
Wirtz tries to foster that depth of engagement by bringing her students into her world to demonstrate that making a connection is, indeed, a two-way street. “You can’t really hide your true self as a teacher,” Wirtz said. “I want them to feel I’m interested in them as a person and as a professional, and when they leave the course, they hopefully have learned something on both levels, personally and professionally.”
In her own public health career, Wirtz has forged a path incorporating several different roles on multiple continents, centered on strengthening health systems and evaluating policy and programs to promote equitable, affordable and quality-assured access to medicines, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
She was initially trained as a pharmacist at Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany, then earned her master’s in clinical pharmacy and a PhD in pharmaceutical policy, both from the University of London. She spent nearly a decade before SPH as a researcher and lecturer at the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Mexico, where she helped launch a research group carrying out pharmaceutical policy analyses throughout Latin America.
Wirtz is currently director of SPH’s World Health Organization Collaborating Center in Pharmaceutical Policy, one of more than 800 institutions in 80 countries recruited to assist WHO in strengthening research and training that support national health development. Additionally, she has worked as a technical adviser for various international organizations, including the Pan American Health Organization; the World Bank; Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Alliance for Health Systems and Policy Research; Health Action International; and the Ford Foundation.
“I see myself as an educator, for sure, but that’s not the only hat I wear. I see myself as someone who is a researcher, who is an expert and a consultant,” Wirtz said. “I try to bring my advising, my consulting and my research into my classroom, and I think that makes it really engaging when [students] hear the real-world scenarios, and what they need to deal with. It makes it relevant for them, so I never said goodbye to research and advising.”
She views each of these components of her career as integral parts of a three-legged stool, with each acting as an essential support for the others. The integration of all three aspects into her classroom management was far from planned; Wirtz says the blending of modes and methods grew organically over time. After several years of teaching, she says it became clear that, “I had to bring to the classroom what I saw in my consulting and research. You don’t leave the other part of your personality at the door of your classroom.”
Ultimately, those classroom interactions have been beneficial across all facets of her career, Wirtz explained. “When I now speak to experts and policymakers, I think I can better speak to them because I explain things to younger professionals in my classes. I have that privilege and I really think that that makes me a stronger advisor, stronger teacher, and a stronger researcher.”
Next fall, she is slated to teach a section of Foundations in Global Health, one of the department’s introductory classes, then will likely switch gears in the spring to teach a more advanced class on global health policy issues. Depending on the semester, she also teaches a course on supply chain management focused on pharmaceutical manufacturing, procurement, and distribution. “Every semester is new because you have new students, and you create, once again, a unique learning community,” Wirtz said. “I’m always looking forward to engaging with new students and learning from them because I learn from them as much as they learn from me.”
Over the past two years, SPH has hired its largest cohort of new faculty, most of whom will have teaching responsibilities. Her best advice to those new colleagues: find good mentors.
“I think it’s so important to have people around you who take teaching seriously, especially when you will hear so many voices that say other things matter more,” Wirtz said. “Teaching can be so fulfilling and having mentors who help you thrive as an educator is as important as it is in research. You need to build your skills with somebody who knows what they’re talking about.”
For Wirtz, her mentors were previous colleagues who were generous with their time and advice, occasionally sitting in on classes to offer feedback and tips or sharing a meal to discuss strategies for an upcoming semester. Nearly all were award-winning teachers themselves, including James Wolff, an associate professor of global health who won a Metcalf Award in 2018; and Taryn Vian, a former associate professor of global health who won SPH’s Norman Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2011.
Wirtz is in esteemed company: Lisa Sullivan, associate dean of education, was a 2001 awardee; Wayne LaMorte, a professor of epidemiology, won in 2011; Sophie Godley, clinical associate professor of community health sciences and director of undergraduate education at the School, is a 2017 winner. Christopher Gill, a former professor of global health, won the University’s top teaching accolade, the Metcalf Cup and Prize, in 2016.
The Metcalf Cup and Prize and Metcalf Awards were established in 1973 to create “a systematic procedure for the review of the quality of teaching at Boston University and the identification and advancement of those members of the faculty who excel as teachers.” When asked what the University might do to further advance the mission of teaching, Wirtz paused, gathered her thoughts, and suggested a possible expansion of mentoring programs such as the Emerging Women Leaders (EWL) program she co-founded at SPH.
EWL has evolved into a force for good at the School, Wirtz said, and is a supportive community that connects doctoral students with public health mentors who offer useful, actionable advice on a variety of career topics.
While EWL began as a discrete program within the School of Public Health, Wirtz says nothing precludes it from broadening the membership and offerings on the Medical Campus or expanding in some form to the Charles River Campus. There are existing connections to other mentoring initiatives in the BU community that Wirtz would be happy to explore further.
“These types of programs can only be strong if they’re maintained over a long period of time, if they’re really ingrained in the DNA of an institution,” Wirtz said. “I wish that the BUSPH support continues for many years to ensure that future cohorts of students can benefit from this important mentoring program.”