Dr. Melissa Begg Named Vice Provost for Educational Programs

June 4, 2014

Melissa Begg, ScD, Mailman School Vice Dean for Education for the past four years has been recruited to take on an exciting new position in the Columbia University Provost’s office.  Effective July 1, 2014, Dr. Begg will become Columbia University’s Vice Provost for Educational Programs. Her selection for the University Vice Provost role reflects her accomplishments at the Mailman School and the School’s reputation across the university and beyond for bold and innovative educational approaches.

In this new role, Dr. Begg will be responsible for advancing interschool and interdisciplinary educational initiatives, as well as for developing, implementing, and monitoring education and continuing education program proposals, distance education programs, partnerships with US and foreign universities, and contractual agreements with other schools, universities, organizations, or agencies where students fulfill part of their education requirements.  She will also direct the University’s reaccreditation process through the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which universities must undertake every ten years.  These duties are currently part of the portfolio of Columbia University’s Vice Provost for Academic Administration, Dr. Stephen Rittenberg, who will retire at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year.  Dr. Rittenberg’s role is being restructured into two roles - a Vice Provost for Educational Programs and a Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs.

 “I have long believed in the Mailman School’s potential to emerge as the leading school in public health education; in her role as Vice Dean, Dr. Begg has worked with her wonderful colleagues in the Office of Education and our superb faculty to deliver on that promise,” said Mailman School Dean Linda Fried, MD, MPH, and DeLamar Professor of Public Health.

Dr. Begg came to the Mailman School in 1989 and joined the Dean’s office in 2008 as Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Programs. She was promoted to Vice Dean for Education two years later.  Among Dr. Begg’s most important accomplishments of the past few years are the following:

  • Establishing a centralized resource for educational excellence – the School’s first Office of Education;

  • Launching the new MPH Core Curriculum, which emphasizes a life course approach to prevention, increasingly recognized by schools across the country and around the world as a new standard for public health education;

  • Extending and enhancing evaluation methods for all educational efforts, from individual modules to entire courses, and from degree to certificate programs;

  • Creating the foundations for the School’s entrée into the digital education space

  • Coordinating the first complex systems simulation program, in collaboration with several MSPH faculty and the Columbia University Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, that will be integrated into the MPH Core Curriculum;

  • Providing state-of-the-art support for educational innovation and improvements in classroom teaching, including additional training to build teaching capacity in new ways, such as through digital education and case-based instruction;

  • Creating assessment structures that enable us to continually revisit the effectiveness of educational programs through work with the outstanding faculty on the Curriculum Committee and the Doctoral Policy Committee;

  • Building greater awareness of the importance of diversity and cultural awareness among faculty and students, starting with training during orientation week and extending through additional activities throughout the year;

  • Supporting the development of coursework that promotes interdisciplinary science and interprofessional skills;

  • Increasing opportunities for public health education at the undergraduate level;

  • Refining teaching assessments and evaluation methods as well as processes and policies around teaching awards;

  • Strengthening the Office of Career Services and teaming with the Office of Institutional Advancement to better integrate the activities of that office with the alumni office and educational programs;

  • Working with the School’s leadership to develop fair and feasible policies around admissions procedures and metrics for teaching excellence that capitalize on each department’s disciplinary strengths, and models for teaching compensation.

Dr. Begg has been a tremendous asset to the Mailman School and the field in so many ways.  For the past 25 years, she has been a professor in the department of biostatistics at the Mailman School, where her scholarly contributions focused on research in the areas of oral health, mental health, and statistical methods for analyzing clustered data.  Since 2006, she has served as co-director of CUMC’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (funded by a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the NIH), a role in which she will continue. As a member of the biostatistics faculty, Dr. Begg has helped to strengthen its clinical research education and create new academic programs, including developing two new training programs.  She has demonstrated great dedication to increasing diversity in the field and at the Mailman School, serving as PI for two diversity programs at the School: the BEST Program for undergraduates, and the PRIDE Program for junior faculty.

Dr. Begg’s contributions have been recognized in her appointment to CUMC’s Glenda Garvey Teaching Academy, her receipt in 2006 of both the Mailman School Teaching Award and Columbia University’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, and her receipt of the 2012 Dean’s Excellence in Leadership Award.  Outside of Columbia, in 2013, Dr. Begg was the recipient of the Lagakos Distinguished Alumni Award from the Harvard School of Public Health, was inducted as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and was selected for the highly competitive ASPPH/Pfizer Award for Teaching Excellence, which recognizes a graduate public health faculty member from one of the CEPH-accredited member-schools and programs of public health who is notable for high quality teaching.