About DACS
The School of Public Healths Dean’s Advisory Council for Students (DACS) is a leadership opportunity open to all SPH undergraduate and graduate students. DACS is open to SPH students from the range of departments and interdisciplinary programs offered in the school. The DACS members serve for three academic quarters.
The DACS offer the Dean insights into the SPH student experience, discuss emergent school issues, policies, and student concerns. They provide feedback for the Dean on key decisions affecting SPH students and serve as the official student consultation body for a number of submissions by the Dean to UW leadership. DACS members practice leadership and group dynamics by initiating and developing projects designed to improve the student experience in the SPH.
DACS members are provided with a leadership curriculum and practice leadership and group dynamics skills. The group meets weekly with Dean Godwin (instructor) and Assistant Dean for Students Juanita Ricks (facilitator).
The application to serve on the DACS is opened each year over the summer term. DACS members are selected from enrolled public health students who submit an application and participate in an interview process. Up to 24 students per year are selected to serve on the DACS.
If you have questions about DACS, please contact Juanita Ricks: jmricks@uw.edu.
The application for the 2027-2028 DACS Cohort will open in summer 2027. If you have questions about DACS application process, please contact Juanita Ricks at jmricks@uw.ed.
The Deans Advisory Council for Students (DACS) was created in the 2014-2015 academic year. It was modeled after a similar student leadership body that supports the UW Provost. The work of bringing a student advisory group to the SPH was initiated by graduate students and helped by the Director of Student Services.
The DACS was envisioned as an independent consultative leadership group, serving as a student voice for the Dean on student issues. DACS was not designed to replace existing student leadership in the school but would ideally have membership that bridged existing student leadership groups and student representative positions on standing committees across the school to be fully realized as consultative and representative of the breadth of the SPH student body.
Over time, shifting interest in DACS, shifting leadership in the Office of the Dean, and other opportunities for student engagement have changed the role of the DACS. It keeps the advisory relationship to the Dean, however there is less emphasis on DACS members having other past or simultaneous leadership roles in SPH. Over time, the DACS has embraced the opportunity to lead the development of projects of interest to the sitting DACS members that enhance the SPH student experience.
In 2019, Dean Godwin proposed a leadership curriculum for the DACS. This curriculum is the only class Dean Godwin teaches each year in SPH. All DACS members are provided access to the leadership curriculum as it formalizes a bi-directional relationship between the efforts that DACS members make to the school and those offered by the Dean exclusively available to the DACS students.
If you have questions about DACS, please contact Juanita Ricks: jmricks@uw.edu.
Projects initiated by DACS groups include:
- 2020-2021: A movie club that offered screenings and discussion sessions of popular and documentary films relevant to public health. Noteworthy that year was a documentary about activist Dolores Huerta
- 2021-2022: A review of practices in creating a community advisory board. The team used this knowledge to assist the Director of the Anti-racism and Community Health Center (ARCH) in initiating the ARCH Student Advisory Board.
- 2022-2023: A community art project that engaged the SPH community around the theme "You can't pour from an empty cup."
- 2024-2025: Crafted a Universal Design for Learning: preferred practices one-pager that highlights UDL practices that SPH students would like to see faculty adopt in their courses.
The 2025-2026 DACS leaders were:
- Four doctoral students enrolled in the Pathobiology, Epidemiology and Global Health programs
- 9 master's students enrolled in the departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Environmental and Occupational Health, Health Systems and Population Health and the Health Management and Informatics interdisciplinary programs and the Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health interdisciplinary programs
- 11 undergraduate students enrolled in the Environmental Public Health, Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health, and Public Health-Global Health majors.