Getting ready to celebrate

The storm

The winds howled, the trees bent precipitously, the rains came down ferociously, some people lost power but hopefully we came through mostly unscathed. We got a good warning about not being complacent where storms are concerned. I especially want new students to learn how to prepare for weather emergencies.

Several of our faculty are experts on preparedness. Bill Gentry, Lecturer and Director of Certificate Programs in Health Policy and Management, is part of the North Carolina State Animal Response Team (SART) who was reminding citizens to prepare for their pets as well as the rest of their family! Bill has offered some tips about preparing pets for disasters that will be posted here shortly.

Meeting with student representatives

Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, Felicia Mebane, PhD, MSPH, Senior Associate Dean Dave Potenziani, PhD, and I will meet with representatives of each of the three major student organizations once a term. These representatives also are members of the School’s Dean’s Council, the leadership organization for the School. Last week, the three of us, Peggy Bentley, PhD, Associate Dean for Global Health and Gretchen Van Vliet, MPH, Director of the Office of Global Health, met with Student Global Health Committee (SGHC) leaders Chris Deery and Rushina Cholera. I am really excited by their energy and commitment. I was pleased we could share Peggy’s work on globalizing the School’s curriculum, thanks to a private donation and support from General Administration and the Provost. Earning the name global always will be a work in progress since we should set a higher bar as we accomplish more.

Celebration soon

Less than 20 days from now, we will celebrate the amazingly generous $50 million gift from Dennis and Joan Gillings with a big celebration as we add the words Gillings and global to our name. We join the School of Pharmacy, our next door neighbor, which recently became the Eshelman School of Pharmacy. For those who want to know more about how the gift came about, I have written extensively about why we are renaming the school in this blog (Basketball, health behaviors and remembering Eve & Responding to events and comments).  There’s been extensive coverage of how we are investing the gift, in addition to endowment (which is like putting the money in a very good savings account so it will last well into the future). I encourage you to read and watch about the nine Gillings Innovation Labs we have funded to accelerate solutions to big public health problems; 13 students are being funded on these projects. I am really excited about these projects which were selected by a very rigorous process of peer review, managed entirely by the SPH and with final decisions made by me, the chairs and several other SPH leaders. Although we will be the first school of public health to add global to its name, and I am proud of that, we are more committed than ever before to North Carolina. As you will see from the GILs funded to date, they represent a good balance of global and NC projects.

Another part of the investment—though much smaller—is in supporting Gillings Visiting Professors. Read more about the program at http://www.sph.unc.edu/accelerate/. Health Policy and Management Professor Tom Ricketts, PhD, MPH will be the first GVP from within the SPH and will be leaving soon for France where he will develop a partnership with Ecole des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (Rennes-Paris).

The week of September 22nd, two GVPs will be with us. We introduced Sheila Leatherman, MSW, earlier. Sheila is one of the world’s authorities on microfinance. Also present will be James Merchant, MD, PhD, who, until August, was dean of the University of Iowa School of Public Health. Jim’s focus areas align really well with the SPH and include injury prevention, rural health and environmental health issues. There will be lots of opportunities for students, faculty and staff to meet with Jim and Sheila.

September 26th will be a day to remember, and I hope you all will attend. Friends of the SPH are coming from all over. Please register for the event. There’ll be a brief (about 30 minutes) ceremony at which President Bowles, Chancellor Thorp, Dennis and Joan Gillings, Board of Trustees Chairman Roger L. Perry, Sr., State Health Director and Director, North Carolina Division of Public Health Leah Devlin, DDS, MPH, Student Government Co-President Lauren Thie and I will make brief remarks. We will unveil the new signs and have a huge picnic with local band Big Fat Gap. We have a wonderful planning committee that has been working hard to make sure this is an event that is memorable, fun for students and represents our values. Some of you have advised us about environmentally appropriate choices for tee shirts and water bottles (how to get water to maybe 1,000 people without making people wait in endless lines to fill up). Others have advised us about serving local foods—a choice that is both economically smart and healthy. While it’s not easy been green and not cheap either, I believe it’s important that we be a role model for the community so we are trying to do our best to negotiate the tension between good environmental choices and cost consciousness

There’s a lot of work still to be done to get ready for September 26th.

A few things in closing

Several faculty and staff members have lost parents in the last few months. My heart goes out to you.

Thanks to those of you who alert me to problems that need attention. Case in point is Maternal and Child Health Associate Professor Lew Margolis, MD, MPH letting me know that our students are not being served by UNC’s Writing Center due to overwhelming demand and insufficient supply of tutors. We are working to solve the problem, but I cannot solve problems I don’t know about. Kudos to Lew.

Do you want to be incredibly cheered about the oneness of the world? Smile, be enraptured and maybe even start dancing? Check out this wonderful YouTube video (Where the h*** is Matt?) made by a young man who started dancing all over the world. As his video became more popular, people started joining him. It is a uniquely 21st century experience!

Happy Monday. Barbara