This week, “Monday Morning” comes on Monday night. I am in my office contemplating the end of an amazing year and the beginning of the new one full of promise. This isn’t the forum to review the year in depth, but I want to point to good news.

It is remarkable that, despite storm clouds on the funding horizon, our faculty members have been extremely successful in achieving strong records of research funding. What outsiders may not realize is that it takes more work than ever before to obtain grants. In the past, excellent grant applications may have been funded on the first try; now it is not uncommon to require three tries, resulting in long delays in funding research. Sometimes, excellent research is not funded at all. That represents a loss for all of us.

Our faculty, staff and students received numerous awards in 2007, evidence of their accomplishments in multiple domains, including the substantive impact of their work.

The most spectacular event of the year was the pledge of $50 million from Dennis and Joan Gillings that is transforming the School of Public Health, helping us to anticipate the future and accelerate our impact in improving the public’s health. We have made substantial progress in realizing the goals for this gift. I am grateful to the Carolina Public Health Solutions group for their dedicated, focused efforts; to the many faculty, staff and students who have rallied to participate; and to the wonderful advisors who agreed to work with us. This gift is about what we do best - accelerating solutions and solving problems.

While the gift from Dennis and Joan Gillings is monumental, hundreds of people have given to the School in the last year, and we are grateful for every gift, no matter what its size. Each gift represents a belief in this School and our ability to make a difference. Each deserves a sense of reciprocal obligation on our part - to use the gift well.

We look ahead to 2008 and see that it will be an awesome year, the year in which our School will become the Dennis and Joan Gillings School of Global Public Health, the first school of public health with “global” in its name. We must act quickly in the next six months to get ready for the name change. This will include making major changes in our Web site and taking a hard look at the global content of our teaching. We have to earn our new name - and keep earning it. Willie Mays said, “It isn’t hard being good from time to time. What is tough is being good every day.” We have to be good every day.

I have been impressed by the advances made by several of our departments (including HPAA) in globalizing their content. Dr. Peggy Bentley and others have been instrumental in this process. As we evolve, I want us to keep a strong sense of our “true north” and not lose sight of the central role of our students in defining what we do and who we are. We look forward to major festivities in the fall to celebrate the name change. There will be many opportunities for anyone interested to contribute to planning efforts.

We are in the heat of a political campaign, the outcome of which will have earthshaking implications not only for public health but for world health, in the broadest sense. I look forward to opportunities to facilitate informed dialogue about the issues. Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement about the Foard Lecture in this regard.

As I look back on the year, I am incredibly grateful to all the people who have helped me and helped our School - faculty, staff, students, people from other schools at UNC, and an incredible and growing group of external advisors who recognize our contributions and see our potential to make a difference. This School is a magnificent institution, and I am grateful to be its dean.

I also am awed by the private struggles that many of our faculty, staff and students have undergone in the last year - people who continue to work in spite of their own and family members’ treatments for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, deaths of close family members, and calamities such as fires. My empathy is with you all, and I wish you good health and recovery.

One only has to pick up the daily paper to see the need for public health - drought in the Triangle, war in Kenya, AIDS in Africa and around the world, obesity at home, more and more people without health insurance and so much more. As we look ahead to 2008, it is clear that we in this School of Public Health are a global resource, and our dedication, skills, experience and knowledge are tools to change the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt said the three most important requirements for happiness are “a feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.” These are good principles for every year.

Onward to 2008! I look forward to working with you. Wishing you health, comfort and joy in the year to come!

Warmly,
Barbara

I just drove down Franklin Street to my office, and it was almost eerily quiet. Most of our students are gone and many faculty and staff as well. There was a sight that has become less and less frequent - a rainy sky, a welcome event in a region battered by drought. I hope everyone is having a great holiday, wherever you are. Whatever your beliefs, I hope the season brings joy and time for reflection and being with those you love.

Last Friday, I joined hundreds of people from North Carolina and beyond to celebrate the life of Dan Okun, PhD, former Kenan distinguished professor and former chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering. Dan was a truly amazing person, and the memorial service showcased the many sides of Dan Okun. Faculty members are so much more than the person standing in front of a class, yet so often, we know only the academic side of a person. In Dan’s case, he also was a devoted husband, father and grandfather; a man with a great sense of humor; a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan; and a zealous Tar Heel fan. He was global before the word was on everyone’s lips. He traveled to 89 countries in his 90 years, surely some sort of record, working on water systems all over the world.

Professor Okun also was positively, passionately local. Were it not for the work of Dan and his ESE colleagues, there might be no OWASA. Were there no OWASA, Chapel Hill might have 30 some days of water left instead of 215. Neither is great, but I prefer 215!

I knew about Dan’s work in creating safe water systems for Chapel Hill and the development of OWASA, but I did not know the important role Dan played in progressive social causes, notably, his role in integrating Chapel Hill’s movie theaters and restaurants in the 1960s. It is hard to believe that so few years ago, African Americans could not walk up to the box office and buy a ticket to a movie or walk into any restaurant in town. Faculty members, including Dan, protested, “sat in,” and fought for change - first for integration, and then against the Vietnam War. Dan was honored by UNC with the Thomas Jefferson Award, one of the University’s greatest accolades. I’m really proud of the role Dan and others in the SPH and UNC played in these events. Today’s Chapel Hillians reap the legacy of their courage.

So many people have told me how much Dan meant to them and the pivotal role he played in their lives. Although I knew Dan in only the last three years of his life, I could count on him to educate me about water (e.g., dual water systems) and to give me refreshingly honest feedback when he did not agree with something I’d done. He loved the department and school and supported both with amazing generosity. Dan, we will miss you. Our thoughts are with his wife Beth, his son Mike and Penny White, his daughter Tema and Tom Stern, and his grandsons Will (who spoke at the school fall semester) and Joedan.

Melissa Watt (HBHE) gave her doctoral presentation to the school last Thursday morning and is now Dr. Watt. Melissa sent an e-mail from an Internet café in Tanzania last February when we announced the gift from Dennis and Joan Gillings. It was our first congratulatory message about the gift from across the world, and I always will remember Melissa fondly for sending her support from so far away. Her dissertation is the kind that makes a difference. It is: practical, yet probing and focusing on a significant issue - adherence to AIDS medications in Africa.

One of my students, Jennifer Gierisch, passed her doctoral orals Friday (!). JoAnne Earp is her chair, and has done a great job mentoring Jennifer. At the end of the session, professor Zimmer from Sociology, one of the committee members, told me that she really likes working with our students, because they are really bright and well prepared, and they come to her wanting to solve problems and make a difference. Those words were one of the best holiday gifts anyone could have given me. Solving problems and making a difference. That’s what we are about. That’s why I am proud to be dean of this wonderful school.

Enjoy the holidays!
Barbara

Yesterday, I sat on the stage with other deans and UNC leaders as more than 2,400 students received their degrees in the Dean Smith Center. Many of them were from the School of Public Health. We are proud of all these students who ranged from undergraduates to master’s degree students to those awarded doctorates. Professor Hodding Carter talked about service and its importance in the 21st century. He quoted from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech in which he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” I grew up on that quote. Nowhere in the University can this adage be represented more fully than in the School of Public Health. I have worked in both public and private institutions. We need both, but I really believe in public institutions and their accountability. Every day our faculty, staff and students serve the U.S. and the global world in so many ways. That’s part of the reason why I am here.

One of our faculty members wrote to me and asked why I used sports metaphors in explaining the rationale behind Monday Morning. No one who knows me would call me a rabid sports fan. I am a converted Tar Heel enthusiast and listen to most football and basketball games on the radio while working if I don’t make the games. What I like especially are the radio programs later in the week when the coach dissects the game. I am always impressed that the coaches are as critical of their own teams and plays as the opponents. They get better by introspection and positive self-criticism. Of course, it is played out in a public arena that we usually avoid. But still, wouldn’t we get better and better if we critiqued our performance regularly? It’s the end of the term. Have we given our students what they need? We are moving toward a schoolwide course evaluation system, and many courses participated last term. We will get some insights into students’ impressions. Students are our most important customers, and I want each of them to feel they made the right decisions in coming to UNC School of Public Health.

Last week, Professor Dan Okun died. Dan was a great environmental engineer who worked in 89 countries in his 90 years. He was transcendently global and passionately local. He helped to create a rational water system for Orange County and advised counties across the U.S. on their water resources. He showed that one can do superb academic work and produce useful products and services – theory to practice. Dan was so passionate about what he did that he had no problem convincing me I had to read a highly technical article on dual water systems. We will miss him!

We had the first meeting of our exciting Acceleration Advisory Committee which is guiding the various Gillings initiatives. It is a superb group, headed by Dr. Dennis and Joan Gillings. I’ll tell you more about it later.

I have been thinking a lot about how the School of Public Health can work with others in the state to improve health care, especially for disadvantaged people. More about that later, too.

Best wishes,
Barbara

It really is hard to believe that another year is nearly over. Students are intently and intensely focused on finals, and there’s not a parking place to be had in front of any coffee shop in town (What’s a desperate Chapel Hillian to do!). Good luck to all our students in your final exams!

Some Carolina School of Public Health students will graduate December 16th. It is easy for December commencement to be overshadowed by the larger one in May. But for those who are December graduates, size should not matter. It’s the accomplishment that counts, and there’s a warm intimacy about the event. Congratulations and best wishes. Please stay connected to us. We need your assessments of your experience, positive and negative. We want to help to you in the years ahead. Please keep in touch.

Over the weekend, I heard Lou Urenick (Chair, Journalism, Boston University) do a wonderful reading about his new book, Backcast (St. Martin’s Press, 2007). The book chronicles a journey he and his son took through Alaska, and documents not only the experience of travel but his reflections of growth and development in his relationship with his son Adam. As I read the book and listened to Lou, I wondered if we provide enough opportunities for reflection not only about travel and education but about global travel experiences. Education should change students, and global travel alters us all in some ways. Do we provide enough opportunities for people to reflect and process the experiences? I hope so but would love to hear from faculty, staff and students.

(Disclaimer: Lou Urenick is a family member.)

Last week was a wonderful validation of the great network of supporters this School of Public Health has developed and how appreciated the School is by alumni, donors and our own faculty, staff and students. This isn’t only about me - it is about the past and the outstanding contributions our staff, students, faculty and alumni have made to improved public health. It is about the present and the excellent job the School does of educating students, conducting cutting-edge research and serving North Carolina. And it is about the future and how we will adapt to the needs of the 21st century.

We had the pleasure of meeting with a group of alumni (more than 40) at GlaxoSmithKline last week. I was so impressed by the quality of the alumni and the substantive, exciting positions they hold in the company. Many were giving back to the School by contributing money and knowledge. Every time I have the opportunity to interact with our alumni, such as at the annual reception at the American Public Health Association meeting, I come away excited and impressed. Our alumni are doing such inspiring work, and they appreciate how their educations contributed to their professional development. They make us proud! We have a superb new director of alumni relations, Cutler Andrews, and I want him to figure out how we can do a better job of serving our alumni.

Thursday night, we had a spectacular event at the SPH to celebrate donors who had donated at the level of $1000 or more in the last year. We called it the World of Difference Dinner to thank people who were helping us to make a world of difference. The atrium of our Michael Hooker Research Center was full, and there was palpable excitement about the SPH, what we had done in the past and the fantastic opportunities ahead. Many people were giving back, because they appreciated the education they had received, but other friends had come to appreciate the school without ever having been students, faculty or staff. We heard wonderful testimonials from Don Holzworth (a generous donor with his wife Jennifer), Dennis Gillings (who previously had endowed a professorship; this past year, he and his wife, Joan, committed to a gift that will name the school the Dennis and Joan Gillings School of Global Public Health), Stacy-Ann Christian (a recent alumna who talked about why she endowed a scholarship) and Fred Brown, president of the SPH Foundation Board.

I am proud and grateful to lead this School but believe strongly that I have to earn my job every day by delivering. As the dean of a public school, I serve the school, UNC-Chapel Hill and the people of this state. There is so much to be done to improve the public’s health. But we are so fortunate to have jobs where we can make a difference. At the dinner, I quoted Winston Churchill who said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” In public health, we have the opportunity to give in ways that really make a difference.