Our Goals

GOAL 1

PREPARE THE NEXT GENERATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH LEADERS THROUGH RIGOROUS EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AND ROBUST STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES

• Introduce new course material on topics of emerging interest, such as global public health dynamics across the lifespan, impacts of climate change, newly recognized toxicological and modern physical hazards
• Further increase practicum opportunities with regional government agencies, industries, and other organizations
• Promote and expand our recently implemented DrPH program, improve the matriculation rate of MPH applicants, and increase the diversity of students enrolled

GOAL 2

EXPAND KNOWLEDGE IN THE FIELD OF PUBLIC HEALTH THROUGH SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY AND INNOVATION

• Maintain a clear focus on impact of chemical, physical, and biological agents on common human disorders including:
  • mechanistic studies in model systems on signaling pathways affected by these agents
  • gene x environment interactions to identify susceptibility as a function of gender, age, inherited, and acquired contributions
• Broaden scope of contributing factors (lifestyles and behavior including violence and stress, tobacco, diet and nutrition) into mechanistic studies of role of environment in common human disorders
• Further increase search for biomarkers of exposure
• Develop projects in computational modeling to resolve environmental health interrelationships and their dynamics
• Expand analytical biochemical capabilities (lipidomics, genomics, telomere) to enable high throughput efforts for population studies

GOAL 3

ADVANCE THE HEALTH OF POPULATIONS ACROSS THE LIFESPAN THROUGH FACULTY SERVICE, IN COOPERATION WITH PARTNERS AT THE REGIONAL, NATIONAL, AND GLOBAL LEVELS

• Participate in and advise local environmental groups to promote improved health equality, responding to environmental issues of particular regional concern by developing and communicating relevant scientific information
• Assume leadership role and active investigation in regional and statewide emerging public health concerns
• Unconventional energy procurement and hydrofracturing

GOAL 4

SECURE ADEQUATE RESOURCES AND PROMOTE OPERATIONS EFFECTIVENESS

• Re-organize laboratory facilities for teaching students cutting-edge techniques in environmental assessment, molecular pathophysiology, functional genomics, and quantitative environmental health modeling
• Further increase the number of students enrolled in our MPH and certificate programs by obtaining a training grant