When Hilary Godwin joined the University of Washington School of Public Health (SPH) as dean in 2018, her goal was to ensure that the School was applying values and best practices from the field of public health to how it was run and how people engaged with each other. This included commitments to engaging stakeholders early and often in charting the School’s path forward and prioritizing how the organization spent its resources and time. It also included balancing using data to drive decision making with a commitment to lifting up the voices of members of the community whose perspectives had not traditionally been prioritized. Finally, it involved gathering data needed to assess whether the School’s programs and initiatives were having impact and using that data to drive positive change.
Over the past five years, these guiding principles have helped the School become a more inclusive place and have centered the institution not only as a leader in research and innovation but also as a school that prioritizes the health and well-being of its community. Here are five ways SPH has grown in the past five years, and its vision for the future.
MPH Common Core
The Master’s in Public Health is the School’s signature degree and has prepared more than 4,000 students for leadership roles in public health since its inception. In 2018, SPH faculty and leadership recognized a need to revamp the core curriculum for the School’s MPH programs so that it better prepared students for the work that they would engage in when they entered the workforce. They decided to create a modern, unified core curriculum for the MPH program, not only meeting emerging accreditation requirements but also reflecting the School’s unique dual commitment to training researchers and practitioners. The goal was to prepare students with rigorous academic skills, practical experience and multidisciplinary studies to meet the public health challenges of the 21st century. Adopting a core curriculum was both a financial and logistical challenge. The faculty and staff leading the charge held forums to get input from a broad range of stakeholders, which included listening to people who were reticent about the change and talking about what supports would make the change less disruptive.
The new core builds student’s professional skills over the course of the year. The six courses that make up the core build on one another so that students get a chance to improve their analytic, writing and practice skills each quarter. The instructors meet twice a quarter to coordinate the content across classes and over the year. This consistency helps students know what to expect and to focus more of their attention on engaging in the material.
Across the core curriculum, MPH students now work together on ethics and equity issues; global and local perspectives; communication, systems thinking, leadership and collaborative skills; and the evidence-to-action-and-back cycle.
“The faculty that teach in the core are very committed to creating inclusive learning experiences and facilitating student engagement,” said India Ornelas, professor and MPH core program director. “The core curriculum gives students the critical skills that our future public health leaders need, including qualitative and quantitative research methods, and how to collaborate with communities to design and implement public health programs.”
To date, more than 400 students have graduated who have taken the new MPH core. Staff of the MPH program consistently conduct an assessment each quarter to understand how the program is running so that it can be improved. Through these assessments, students have reported that these courses cover important topics and allow them to apply what they learn to public health problems. Critically, the School has also continued to see strong demand for the MPH programs and graduates report high levels of success in pursuing their post-graduation goals.
Faculty compensation plan
Five years ago, faculty were reporting low morale, in large part due to inequities in faculty expectations and compensation and a sense that “the School did not have their back,” Godwin said. That’s why the leadership team prioritized the development of a faculty compensation plan that reevaluated how the School supports faculty and long-standing budget models. After an inclusive process that engaged faculty and leadership across the School, the plan introduced consistent expectations for faculty compensation and workload starting in AY20-21.
One of the first areas the plan addressed was the difference in support between tenure-track faculty and faculty in the without tenure (WOT) track. These two faculty positions have nearly identical appointment and promotion criteria, but tenure track faculty have 50% of their salary guaranteed by the UW. By contrast, WOT faculty are “soft-money” and technically do not have any of their salary guaranteed by the University. The WOT series is widely used in both SPH and the UW School of Medicine, but not used very much in other units at the UW. Several WOT faculty reported to Godwin that they felt like independent contractors rather than employees. To address this, the faculty compensation plan introduced teaching expectations in exchange for a guarantee of income. SPH was able to do this in large part due to increased enrollments in our undergraduate programs over the last 10 years. The plan guarantees 30% of income for faculty without tenure, in exchange for them teaching at least one class per year. While this is still less than the 50% provided for faculty with tenure (who are expected to teach two classes per year), it is a big improvement on the ~5% guaranteed support that most WOT received prior to the faculty compensation plan.
Global Health Professor Gabrielle O’Malley, who is a WOT faculty member, has been the PI of grants totaling nearly $60,000,000. “Given the effort required to generate and maintain that kind of a grant portfolio, I had been feeling like I was contributing much more to the University than the University was investing in me,” O’Malley said. “The SPH compensation policy felt like a commitment was being made to me and signaled that I was truly a valued member of the faculty.”
The second area was disparities between how much faculty were compensated for teaching the same class, but in different departments. This discrepancy was due to differences in what departments felt that they were able to afford to pay for instruction. To address this, the School established shared compensation expectations and reallocated resources so that faculty compensation for the same class became consistent between departments.
As the School enters its fourth year of the faculty compensation plan, SPH leadership will conduct a comprehensive assessment of its effectiveness, focusing on whether it has been consistently deployed across the school as well as what has and has not worked for faculty.
“We’re spending this year doing what we do in public health, which is to take a step back, to get input from the people most affected, gather data and assess. The information we gather will be shared and discussed with faculty across the School, so that we can determine whether any tweaks need to be made for academic year 2024-25,” Godwin said.
Strategic Plan
A committee of diverse stakeholders developed the 2020-2025 strategic plan with the input of students, staff, faculty and alumni. This allowed for shared ownership in the creation of the School’s direction: to solve the greatest public health challenges and co-create health equity with communities in the region and the world.
The strategic plan created shared goals and metrics, which are publicly accessible and have been tracked and evaluated each year. Five Key Result Areas (KRA) outline the School’s work:
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Collective Culture of Meaningful Change
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Education for Leadership and Transformation
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Methods to Research to Practice Continuum
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Equity, Justice, and Anti-Racism
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Reputation and Visibility
The strategic plan proved to be an important north star for the School amidst the turbulent years of the COVID-19 pandemic. With further constraints on money, time and energy, leaders had to make choices about what their teams had the bandwidth to focus on. The plan pointed to values like anti-racism and health equity as ones to prioritize.
“The SPH Strategic Plan has been especially useful for keeping us focused on what matters most to us, and to help us put our energy and resources there,” said Stephanie Farquhar, professor and associate dean who has overseen how the School measures progress in the strategic plan. “It helps us achieve quality milestones by being selective."
The strategic plan has also helped leadership and communications teams across the School present a cohesive and coherent narrative about our goals and the impact we seek to have in the world. “I particularly love the series of articles that have emerged that highlight the amazing work that faculty, staff and students conduct across the School in the area of Methods to Research to Practice,” Godwin said. “These stories really do a great job of highlighting how interconnected the work across our departments and programs is and how the collaborative culture that is integral to our School allows us to make headway on complex public health issues.”
Investment in research supports
Faculty in SPH continue to drive the public health research agenda both nationally and globally. As a result, SPH is one of the largest research units within the UW and among other leading schools of public health. That’s why providing support for research, whether that’s through grant applications or database infrastructure, has been an important priority for the School over the last five years and will continue to be a priority in the years to come.
During this period the School established a Research Council, composed of faculty and research administrators in all Departments and Programs, who advise the Office of the Dean on research issues. The Research Council also worked the previous Associate Dean for Research, Lisa Manhart, to draft and implement a Research Roadmap that charts strategies for progress in four areas: Antiracism in research, Research Staff Professional Development and Support, Investigator support, and training opportunities. Meanwhile, faculty in SPH are applying for – and receiving – record numbers of grants and awards.
However, faculty have also reported that compiling data and materials for training grants or program project grants can be both time-consuming and difficult. Based on input from faculty and staff across the School, SPH has prioritized supporting faculty who are applying for these types of grants over the last couple of years. Work has begun on establishing school-wide databases for training grant applications, and the School has supported pre-award administrative staff to assist in application and submission. "Faculty who are considering applying for a training or center grant should be sure to reach out to me directly” said Associate Dean for Research, Jerry Cangelosi “and let us know how so that we can support you.”
Another area of investment has been in integrated technology support. This recommendation also came from a workgroup of representatives from across the School, which looked at what it would take to have cutting-edge IT support. This led to the hire of the School’s first chief information officer, Kevin Rimlinger, who will lead change management in IT practices and coordinate with leaders and IT staff across the School to prioritize infrastructure investments.
This aligns with a movement across public health institutions and organizations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to create a more robust and equitable data infrastructure across the U.S. This kind of investment will provide researchers with tools for data collection, storage and processing, which will help them spend more time on science and innovation and less on ensuring the basic functioning and interoperability of data systems.
Investment in people
The well-being of people within the School has been an important focus for the last five years and creating a “Collective Culture of Meaningful Change” is one of the five key result areas highlighted in the School’s Strategic Plan. Results from a 2023 survey of SPH stakeholders demonstrates that majority of respondents agree or strongly agree that the School is meeting its goals of supporting the development and growth of faculty, staff and students and maintaining a culture of well-being and connection.
The School has particularly prioritized mental health support and creating an accessible environment for students both during the emergency phase of pandemic and afterward. Critically, SPH has also invested in providing training and supports for faculty and staff who work closest with students. This has included hiring staff with expertise in mental health counseling and access and accommodations who work directly with instructional faculty and student affairs staff in addition to students and serve as liaisons to central campus student support units. In addition, the School hired TAs to help with technical support as faculty began teaching courses remotely. Many of those TA positions will now be transitioned in to helping provide support for faculty and staff amidst the growth of artificial intelligence.
However, there is always room for improvement. In surveys, faculty and staff ratings on how “UW SPH maintains a culture of well-being and connection” are lower than those for students. As the School moves forward, figuring out how to make sure that faculty and staff see value in working and gathering together in person with each other and other members of our community will be a top priority, Godwin said.
Looking toward the future
Ensuring that the School’s faculty, staff and students have the support that they need to follow their passions to make the world a healthier place for all people and centering equity will continue to be top priorities for SPH going forward. In the coming year, faculty, staff and students can also expect to be engaged in conversations around improvements to the faculty compensation plan, implementation of new IT supports and infrastructure, and long-term financial planning.
The School will also be talking more about its renewed commitment to and focus on Indigenous health. Last spring, Assistant Professor Derek Jennings, Quapaw and Sac and Fox, was named the School’s inaugural associate dean for Indigenous affairs and engagement. This position reflects SPH’s recommitment to authentic engagement with Tribal communities, introducing Indigenous ways of knowing into work within the School, and creating a more supportive and robust community for Native faculty, staff and students in the health sciences schools at the UW. Jennings envisions his new role as helping to build these meaningful connections and create space for Indigenous thoughts, ideas and people within our institutions.
“It’s important to realize that tribes across our region, their strengths, and their challenges are not monolithic and that building strong relationships requires time and commitment,” Jennings said.
Godwin said this work will help unify the public health relationships and research that people within the School have with Indigenous communities as well as center the priorities of those communities in Washington state.
The Center for Anti-Racism in Community Health (ARCH) also continues to be an important priority. Led by inaugural Director Dr. Wendy E. Barrington, the ARCH Center will serve as a community-driven academic hub focused on the critical interrogation and disruption of racism and racialization within systems while centering those most impacted by legacies of U.S. colonization.
Addressing the public health impacts of climate change will also be a point of focus for the School. The Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHanGE) has been a leader in this work. CHanGE is an interdisciplinary team of researchers, teachers and practitioners that partners with communities to develop tools, test interventions, implement solutions, and train the next generation to promote and protect health in a changing climate.
2023 State of the School address
On Oct. 3, Dean Hilary Godwin addressed the School of Public Health community to share highlights of the remarkable growth at SPH over the past 5 years, from record numbers of new students and faculty and groundbreaking research that builds a healthier tomorrow. Godwin invites the School community to consider how it will continue to reshape the future of public health.