Education Accomplishments and Progress

Overview

Our education goal: We will broaden who we teach, diversify how we teach, and enrich what we teach in response to evolving public health priorities and emerging challenges.

To achieve our education goal, we set three specific objectives:

• Increase access to our educational programs to meet the diverse and evolving needs of a wide range of students and professionals.
• Innovate how we teach by leveraging new pedagogical tools and technology to support teaching excellence and inclusive training experiences.
• Enhance our educational content so students are prepared to engage in multisectoral public health research and practice, addressing current and emerging public health challenges and prioritizing social justice and health equity.

We recognize the multifaceted challenges that today’s public health workforce faces within dynamic social, economic, and political environments. Acquiring new skills to tackle these complexities does not always necessitate pursuing a degree. To address the needs of professionals who wish to expand their expertise without committing to a degree program, we launched the Rollins Health Education Institute (RHEDI). This initiative serves as an educational hub, offering short courses created by our faculty. Specifically tailored for public health practitioners, Rollins alumni, Emory staff, and other professionals, RHEDI provides a pathway for lifelong learning in public health.

A foundational component of our strategic initiatives revolves around enhancing educational accessibility by delivering high-quality programs online.  The increased flexibility of our expanded online offerings will benefit part-time degree students balancing personal and professional demands as well as current residential students, such as medical residency fellows and those seeking dual degrees with other Emory programs.

Another way that we are expanding access to our educational programs, innovating how we teach through the development of online course offerings, and enhancing our educational content is by offering a new DrPH program at the school. This program will prepare students to engage in multisectoral public health research and practice while prioritizing social justice and health equity. Through all these educational initiatives, we aim to empower individuals in our community to address current and emerging public health challenges effectively.

Key Achievements

Increase access to our educational programs to meet the diverse and evolving needs of a wide range of students and professionals.

• Offered five RHEDI courses in summer 2024, including remote learning options to reach a wider set of learners.
• Expanded support for our degree-seeking students who need additional or refreshed quantitative training through the creation of an online self-paced instructional module called “Quantitative Essentials for Public Health.”
• Adopted new academic policies to support students’ academic success in cases where they experience significant and unforeseen circumstances that temporarily impact their performance.

Innovate how we teach by leveraging new pedagogical tools and technology to support teaching excellence and inclusive training experiences.

• Developed online part-time degree programs in behavioral, social, and health education sciences; global environmental health; global health; and health policy.
• Supported development of online courses for RHEDI.
• Enhanced capacity in instructional design and pedagogical expertise to support faculty and instructors as they develop their online courses.
• Created a mechanism to offer a financial incentive to faculty upon the development of their first online course.
• Updated the Rollins TLC website with new information and teaching tools as needed to ensure it remains a resource to faculty for best teaching practices.
• Collaborated with the Office of Career Development to assess strategies to better align programs and services with the unique career trajectories of PhD graduates.

Enhance our educational content so students are prepared to engage in multisectoral public health research and practice, addressing current and emerging public health challenges and prioritizing social justice and health equity. 

• Received approval for a new, fully online DrPH program which will enroll its first cohort for fall semester 2025.
• Established a new MPH/Master in Management dual degree program with Goizueta Business School. This program is open to enroll students in fall semester 2024.
• Initiated the development of doctoral-level grant-writing course for students across our programs in response to feedback from the Doctoral Student Advisory Board.