What do you do at Kent State’s College of Public Health?
I am a professor of health policy and management. I am also the graduate coordinator for the health policy and management graduate programs and the program coordinator for the graduate Healthcare Compliance Certificate.
As CPH founder faculty, what is the best memory of these 15 years?
It was an amazing opportunity to work with a small group of talented people to create something from scratch. We literally sat around a conference table in the Michael Schwartz Center and created the College of Public Health.
What, in your opinion, is the most important contribution of CPH in our community? Local and global?
It’s the people we have trained. It’s so gratifying when you read or hear about someone out in the world making an impact and you recognize that person as one of our alumni.
What impact has it had on the fields of public health and education?
I think our impact is due in part to the disciplinary diversity of our faculty. We have a strong core of traditional public health faculty. But, we also have teachers and researchers from a wide range of disciplines that help our students get a much broader view of public health in multiple contexts.
What is your latest research/project?
We received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create a public health law course. The course will be available to graduate students this coming academic year as an elective. We will also make an undergraduate version and a continuing education version that will be offered to the practicing public health workforce in Ohio and the nation. Funding was very competitive. There were initially plans for five awards nationally but that was cut back to three. It was our commitment to creating and offering the workforce development course that carried the day for Kent State.
Favorite teaching moment?
I have had several occasions where a student will tell me that something they learned in one of my classes helped them in a job interview or they were able to contribute to a project at work. Those stories are always rewarding. Teaching law classes is challenging because you are trying to give students a set of tools that can be applied in an almost limitless variety of situations. There are no two compliance problems that are exactly alike. Every HIPAA situation is different. So they need to learn very discreet and exacting rules and then be able to apply them in broad and messy situations.
If you could have three apps on your smartphone, which would you pick and why?
Spotify for sure. I love to listen to music and podcasts throughout the day.
Todoist is my go-to task manager. I have just about everything I need to get done in a given day in that app. I love checking things off when I complete a task.
NYT Games. I do the Wordle, Strands, Connections, The Mini, and the full-sized crossword puzzle pretty much every day. I have a group chat with a bunch of my fraternity brothers and we all share the results with each other.
What’s your favorite way to unwind after a busy day?
I like to workout, although I typically do that first thing in the morning. At night I like to cook and read.
What is the last TV show or book that you read?
TV show is Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon. I am a big Top Gear fan and the show follows one of the presenters, Jeremy Clarkson as he learns to farm his huge property in the Cotswolds, England.
The book I just finished is The Last Full Measure by Jeff Shaara. It’s the final book in a trilogy that follows key military leaders in the Civil War from their time at West Point until Reconstruction. His father, Michael Shaara, actually wrote what is chronologically the second book in the series Killer Angels which focuses on the battle at Gettysburg. Michael passed away at a relatively young age, and his son Jeff picked up the torch to write the bookend editions.
Complete the following sentence: “Key elements of leadership include:”
Understanding that there is a lot you don’t know about most things. Leaders need to trust competent people to do their jobs and give them a sense of agency in the organization. One of the things I learned early on when I became a noncommissioned officer in the Army is that if you just think you are going to drop orders all the time, the lower enlisted are going to make your life miserable. This may sound cliché, but teamwork really is the key to getting things done in any organization.
What is something that you are looking forward to both personally and professionally?
As much as I don’t like to admit this to myself in mid-May, I look forward to the start of the academic year in August. The relative peace and quiet on campus in the summer is nice, but it’s great seeing the campus full of people again.