Faculty & Staff

By Ian Lapp, assoc. dean for academic affairs and education

As we begin the new academic year, I would like to bring you up to date on the Council for Education on Public Health (CEPH) accreditation process and provide some reflections on what this assessment by our peers tells us about our collective accomplishments as a School. 

First, let’s review where we are in the process. Over the summer, the School received the CEPH site visit report, a 50-page document based on our self-study report (550 pages) and the site visit, which extended over three days last April.  We have carefully reviewed the site visit report, and Dean Fried and I have submitted a formal response. The CEPH Board of Councilors will review all materials and will make the accreditation decision at their fall meeting, October 14-16.  We will be notified of their decision shortly afterwards.

While an official ruling is still forthcoming, it is safe to say, based on the CEPH site visit report, that this was the School’s most successful accreditation to date.  In sum, we were graded on 27 criteria and we were in compliance on 26 and partially in compliance on one criterion. Based on the experience of our peers, we know it is rare to achieve this level of success.

The site visit report describes the following areas as particularly “impressive”: the strength of our faculty, the quality of our students, the prominence of our research and scholarship, our notable success in competing for government and private grants, the major impact of our public health practice programs both locally and globally, and the enthusiasm of our junior faculty, students, community partners and alumni about the School.  The site visitors’ assessment also provides strong validation for the School’s portfolio of new initiatives including our strategic planning effort, our support for faculty development especially for junior faculty (the new mentoring program, the initiatives to improve quality of instructional skills, the programs to improve our research resources and grantsmanship), our deep commitment to increase diversity and inclusiveness, our emphasis on interdisciplinary science, our new budget model and financial health, and our current efforts on curriculum renewal.

The site visit report highlights a number of new accomplishments of the School including the public health oath, new classroom space, the Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) Lab Space, and the ranking of the research portfolio, to name just a few.  The Public Health Oath was described by students during the site visit as “framing the beginning of their approach to the profession of public health.”  The new classroom space at the Mailman School and CUMC was described as “state of the art.”  The EHS Lab Space, which opened one week prior to the site visit, was given “rave reviews” by faculty to the site visitors.  The site visitors made a special note of the School’s leadership in public health research and that we rose to third in the NIH research ranking among schools of public health, which took place just a month before the site visit. 

We expect the School to receive a near perfect score for accreditation.  We received a partially met on one criterion because not all MPH students receive instruction in the full range of the social and behavioral sciences.  Overall, our educational programs received strong affirmation and the site visit report highlighted as a strength the aspiration of our curriculum renewal initiative and in particular our approach to engaging constituencies across the School about the curriculum.  We have assessed that the best approach to effectively addressing the site visitor critique of our core curriculum was not to take actions outside of the curriculum renewal process but rather to make it an essential element of the process. 

The accreditation process has been a long process, more than three years in the making.  Our success is a testament to the long-standing strengths of our School and the collective efforts of all of us over the last two years.  The accreditation process, development of the self-study, and the site visit are also a tribute to the culture of collaboration that exists across the School’s faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community partners.  The journey and the outcomes are something we can all be proud of – a true Mailman School moment!