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Department of Public Health

Faculty

Valerie Leiter, Professor and Chair
Shelley White, Associate Professor (on sabbatical for the 2020-2021 academic year)
John Quattrochi, Assistant Professor, Interim MPH Program Director
Felipe Agudelo-Acevedo, Assistant Professor
Donna Cole, Assistant Professor
Elise Brenner, Assistant Professor

Affiliated Faculty
Elizabeth Scott, Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Natural and Behavioral Sciences

Overview

This program provides a unique and challenging educational experience for students who wish to combine an interdisciplinary liberal arts education with a specialty focus on public health. The major provides conceptual foundations and empirical bases for analyzing the interplay between science, society, and health, and prepares students for a variety of public health careers. The minor provides students with an opportunity to augment their specialty education with this broad perspective. There is a rising demand for public health professionals, due to increased global concerns regarding infectious and chronic disease epidemiology, food and water safety, sanitation, and environmental health issues as well as health inequities. Public health professionals have excellent employment prospects, as researchers, community health workers, and health program managers.

Learning Outcomes

The Public Health department has identified the following essential public health domains as learning outcomes for our undergraduate majors:

Address the history and philosophy of public health as well as its core values, concepts and functions across the globe and in society

Address the basic concepts, methods, and tools of public health data collection, use and analysis and why evidence-based approaches are an essential part of public health practice

Address the concepts of population health, and the basic processes, approaches and interventions that identify and address the major health-related needs and concerns of populations

Address the underlying science of human health and disease including opportunities for promoting and protecting health across the life course

Address the socio-economic, behavioral, biological, environmental and other factors that impact human health and contribute to health disparities

Address the fundamental concepts and features of project implementation, including planning, assessment and evaluation

Address the fundamental characteristics and organizational structures of the U.S. health system as well as to the differences in systems in other countries

Departmental Honors

A graduating senior in the department of Public Health can earn Department Honors based on either one of the following criteria:

  1. A cumulative GPA of 3.7 or above and successfully completed a thesis
  2. A cumulative GPA of 3.7 or above and undertaken significant engagement with service to public health, beyond the required credit-bearing service-learning courses and internships