What I’m reading

I just finished a very provocative book from the Carnegie Foundation called The Formation of Scholars. One of the premises of the book is that we have been delivering doctoral education for hundreds of years, and that it should evolve. Are we giving students the right experiences for the 21st century, a world in which they will function primarily in interdisciplinary teams? It is an important question, and one I will be asking our faculty, students and alumni.

Get comfortable with discomfort

As readers of this blog know, one of my preferred forms of exercise is indoor spinning which I do five or six times a week at the UNC Wellness Center, surely one of the best fitness centers anywhere in the world. One of the instructors tells us to get comfortable with discomfort. I’ve been thinking a lot about that message. It doesn’t just apply to pushing oneself physically which I believe is critical to fitness. It also relates to pushing oneself to master new intellectual content, become comfortable with different kinds of people and even to put oneself in new global settings and feel OK with not being at home.

Getting comfortable with immigration

Maybe the message above applies to immigration as well. There is so much anxiety and discomfort with the topic of immigration. We should get comfortable with our discomfort that the world is changing and move on. Last Friday, Professor James Johnson from the Kenan-Flagler Business School, gave a fantastic talk at the N.C. State Health Directors’ annual meeting in Raleigh. It was a tour de force on immigration. Through compelling data, explanation and humor, Jim told the story of how immigration in the U.S. has changed over the last 100+ years. He showed very convincing data about the huge boom of pending retirements and made it clear that if we don’t capitalize on the influx of immigrants, many of them Hispanic, we are not going to fill crucial jobs in this country. North Carolina is a state in transition, with one of the fastest growing immigrant populations of any state in the country. All of this points to the need for us to become comfortable with the changing demographics and invest in helping these newcomers becoming comfortable with us. As Governor Mike Easley has courageously advocated, that means above all, providing access to education.

I suspect, like me, many readers are the grandchildren or even children of immigrants. My grandparents on my father’s side came from Lithuania by boat to Ellis Island. One generation away, my father obtained a master’s degree, thanks in part to the GI bill. He made huge contributions to the health of society through his groundbreaking work at the American Cancer Society where he conceived and developed the area of public service announcements to educate people about the dangers of smoking. His education was a great investment that benefitted to society. The same potential for benefit lies in many immigrants.

Have a good week!

This has been a very interesting week to be Dean of our School. One minute I was meeting with a student, another with a chair, reviewing a proposal the next, and then meeting with faculty, staff and students at Kenan-Flagler Business School, where I am chairing the dean search. Late at night, I edited chapters for the 4th edition of a textbook for which I am a co-author. In between, I was addressing many issues, some of them life and death challenges facing our faculty, students and staff. Sometimes, it feels like everyone here is part of an extended family, and I am related to them all. I really am troubled when bad things happen to people in the school. Sometimes, there seems to be too much of that, but it is balanced by lots of joy, too.

Last Friday, we had a truly fascinating discussion with Dr. Ariel Pablos-Mendez, Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation (http://www.rockfound.org). I was struck by the convergence of our shared concerns about scaling up solutions to public health problems, training for the complexity of health and other systems in the 21st century, figuring out how to use new technologies to improve public health and disseminating evidence-based solutions to public health problems. They are doing some fascinating work and coming to many similar conclusions to those we have reached about what is needed. Check out the Pocantico II report, New Initiatives and Opportunities for Global Health, on their Web site.

We in public health should be asking ourselves what skills are needed for the 21st century. Can we move fast enough to transform yesterday’s curricula and strategies to fit today’s and tomorrow’s needs?

A Carolina Tidbit: I forgot to mention when I wrote about our visit to the UAE that when we were standing in line at the airport in Abu Dhabi, we looked behind us. There was a young man in a Carolina sweatshirt! Here we were in the Abu Dhabi airport, and there was someone in a Carolina shirt. Can we be much more global! We asked him if he went to Carolina, and he said he didn’t, but we got the feeling he liked the shirt or something about Carolina. Wish we had taken a picture and talked with him more about what Carolina meant to him.

Marcel Proust said “The true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” I believe that is only partly true. My sense, having just returned from Abu Dhabi and new landscapes (desert on sea) for me, is that one can view new landscapes with new eyes. Suddenly, one’s lens on the world shifts. I do not think I will ever see the world in exactly the same way - an extra dimension of complexity has been added.

I keep coming back to comments we heard from United Arab Emirates (UAE) colleagues about how difficult it is for Muslim students to get visas to attend American universities and what that will mean for us. The web of relationships that people build in universities could be denied to us if we are not able to fix the student immigration problem. Let’s face it, if Middle Eastern students don’t come to the U.S. for education, their loyalties and connections will be elsewhere. When they graduate and engage in commerce, whose products will they buy? Who will be their consultants? To what schools will they send their students? As that part of the world becomes increasingly wealthy, how will that affect our economy? We should be concerned. And that doesn’t even address other issues of social justice, fairness and enlightened self-interest.

I thought my blog readers might enjoy seeing some pictures from our trip to the UAE. The file includes pictures taken by Mike Aitken (chair, Environmental Sciences and Engineering); Ivan Rusyn (associate professor, ESE); and me.

You will need to have Flash Player on your computer to view the slideshow.

We also traveled with Jackie MacDonald (assistant professor, ESE); Andy Olshan (chair, Epidemiology); and Bill Sollecito (director, Public Health Leadership Program). Colleagues from RAND and UAE University joined us. Our UAE colleagues included Magid Al-Mansouri (Secretary General, Environmental Agency, Abu Dhabi) and other senior agency people and Dr. Khan from the World Health Organization.

Falcons are to the Emirates what the eagle is to us and then some. It was quite exciting to get to hold a falcon (see pictures).

“Learn to see, and then you’ll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.” Carlos Castenada

We had a remarkable day here yesterday. We presented our proposal to develop an environmental plan for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to a group that represented different organizations, including the environmental authority, health authorities and World Health Organization. Our partners included RAND and UAE University.

Last night, we and representatives from Harvard and Bloomberg Schools of Public Health were treated to a traditional Middle Eastern dinner at the hotel. (We were to have been taken to the desert for dinner, but it was too windy.) The host arrived and announced that the centerpiece of the dinner would be camel and said he hoped I would enjoy it. I was faced with the possibility of committing an international faux pas. Would I tell him that, as a vegetarian for more than 25 years, I just could not eat camel or succumb? I gulped and told him how honored we were to be offered this delicacy, but I could not eat it. A moment of discomfort passed, and our gracious hosts brought me a wonderful vegetarian entrée (whew!).

The evening was fascinating and reinforced for me the belief that the world would be much better if more people got to know each other. It sounds like such a cliché, and yet, how many readers have been in a room that is half Muslim and half U.S. public health folks? It was a first for me.

We heard about educational and investment policies of the UAE that are so farsighted and far-reaching that I could not help but wonder why the U.S. is not applying them — for example, policies that require companies that sell arms here to reinvest some of their profits in other industries, such as health care.

We talked about telemedicine, education, the difficulties of getting Emirate students into U.S. colleges, and a range of other topics. I came away nevertheless impressed with how anxious they are to collaborate across the world. And as I read the papers here, full of stories about health, education and new technologies, I am more concerned than ever that the U.S. must accelerate its programs to assure that we are global competitors and global citizens.

Falconry is a national sport here, and the falcon is the national bird. Our host brought his two falcons and several of us got to hold them, a real treat. Pictures will follow.

Photo by Mark Griffin

Abu Dhabi is an amazing place where traditional culture co-exists with new technologies. It is common to see women in traditional long black gowns (abaya), with their faces covered, speaking animatedly on cell phones. You hear the call to prayers echo throughout the city while modern cars race by on state-of-the-art roads. You see signs on the hotel board for “ladies weddings” along with announcements about upcoming high-tech meetings. This is a land of fascinating dichotomies that appear to co-exist.

Today, we met with the Dean of Science at United Arab Emirates University, and we were struck by the opportunities for collaboration across the world.

Photo by Robert Fitzjohn

We are truly a global school in a global setting, addressing universal issues. For example, the Emirates newspaper carried a full-page announcement for a weight loss program being run by the newspaper, reminding me that the obesity epidemic is indeed a global one.

It is actually Saturday morning although morning is supposed to follow a night in which one has slept. I have never been able to sleep on planes, but long trips are great for catching up on journal reading and manuscript reviews. Several of us from the School are flying to Abu Dhabi to present a proposal to develop an environmental plan for the country. As Professor Bill Sollecito and I flew through London, I could not help but think about the faculty and students who travel globally with some frequency. My admiration for them grows with my own global travel.

I have been reading a lot about Abu Dhabi, a country which is one of the oldest civilizations but whose first road was only built in the last third of the 20th century. I wonder what it will feel like and be like to be there.

Warmly,
Barbara