We are writing to follow up on our email earlier this month about a reorganization of the School’s communications teams to let you know of additional staffing changes to better serve our community and provide staff with the support they need and deserve.

The School has been growing its faculty, research, and educational activities. While this growth is positive and has increased our School’s impact, the need for growing our staff to meet the increasing demands is evident. We recognize that this disproportionate growth has impacted staff across the School in various ways, including but not limited to increased responsibilities and workloads, the need for longer workdays, and increased pressure and stress.

Over the past several months, we have worked with faculty and staff leadership to review our structure supporting academic and research administration. Since July, the senior administrative staff has met to review recommendations for different organizational structures to support the School, and we have been vetting and modifying recommendations based on faculty feedback

The principles and goals for this review included:

• Creating a framework that works for the whole School and consistent structures for each center and department
• Ensuring the day-to-day experience of faculty isn’t affected (as much as possible)
• Creating pathways for staff support and growth
• Ensuring resilient administrative structures for expansion of current and new centers
• Maintaining strong collaboration and community among staff and faculty
• Coordinating with similar efforts happening at Dean of the Faculty, Engineering, and BioMed

After this review process and working with our partners in the Office of the Provost and University Human Resources, the School has decided to reorganize its administrative staff in academic departments and research centers in a way that will benefit all staff:

• The School will create four administrative cores aligned with the four academic departments.
• These administrative units will be responsible for Grant Management, Academic Administration, Operations, and Financial Management.
• The administrative cores will be led by a Director of Finance and Administration reporting to the Executive Dean of Finance and Administration with dotted lines to the Department Chair and Center Directors.
• All staff have been assigned a position that aligns with the business needs of the core, skills, and experience.

This staffing model will allow us to leverage our structure while we maintain and enhance service levels to faculty, enable staff to specialize and gain growth opportunities, and lead to the distribution of work and increasing of staff based on metrics. The School will be investing close to $1 million in the staffing infrastructure, and we estimate we will be expanding the number of staff by approximately eight across the cores based on current metrics.

The cores will be organized in the following grouping:

• Biostatistics
  • Center for Statistical Sciences
• Behavioral and Social Sciences
  • Center for Alcohol & Addiction Studies
  • Center for Health Promotion and Health Equity
• Epidemiology
  • Center for Epidemiologic Research
  • Center for Children’s Environmental Health
  • Mindfulness Center
  • International Health Institute
  • Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute
  • Dean’s Office Research (Pandemics)
• Health Services, Policy, and Practice
  • Center for Gerontology & Healthcare Research
  • Center for Long-Term Quality & Innovation
  • Center for Evidence Synthesis in Health

All affected staff were informed of how the reorganization will impact them last week. We are excited that these changes will not only benefit those core staff, but also further drive our School’s mission forward while making it an ideal place to work. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions, and we look forward to the enhanced operations of our departments and centers.

Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH
Dean, School of Public Health

Sara Walsh
Executive Dean of Finance and Administration