Mohammad R. Torabi, founding dean of the IU School of Public Health, has announced that he plans to step down from his administrative role and return to the faculty at the successful conclusion of a national search for his successor, expected no earlier than June 2017.
By that time, he will have led the school for seven years, and served IU and the school in faculty and leadership capacities for 35 years. A search committee will be appointed in the fall, according to an IU press release.
Torabi was appointed dean Jan. 1, 2012, having served from November 2010 as interim dean of the school’s previous incarnation, the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, founded in 1946. Under his leadership, the school successfully navigated the Council on Education in Public Health’s rigorous accreditation process, becoming an accredited school of public health in 2012, according to a press release.
“The entire campus is deeply grateful to Dean Torabi for his stellar leadership during the transition of the school from HPER to public health,” Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel said in a press release. “Dean Torabi successfully shepherded the school through its first accreditation process and has hired first-rate faculty members who are increasing multidisciplinary collaboration across our campus. With his characteristic care for the school and its community, Dean Torabi has provided a long lead time to ensure that we can have a national search for the school’s next leadership, and that the leadership transition, whenever it occurs, will be seamless.”
During Torabi’s tenure, the school has created one new department, the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics; expanded its master’s degree programs; increased credit hours and undergraduate enrollment; added bachelor’s degrees in environmental health and epidemiology; and launched a living-learning center for students focused on public health in Briscoe Residence Center.
The school has made advances in career services and academic advising by requiring all School of Public Health majors to meet with an assigned adviser before registering for class each term.
It also offers more frequent access to targeted career fairs and guidance on internship acquisition and success, according to a press release.
In recent years, the school has advanced its mission to train multidisciplinary researchers who serve communities throughout Indiana, the nation and the world. The School of Public Health has more than 2,400 community members participating in school partnerships, and more than 1,000 individuals are taking courses from the school’s free, online workforce development portal, “Public Health & You,” according to a press release.
Torabi and his leadership team have helped elevate the research profile of the school by expanding international partnerships and disease-prevention programs. More than half of the school’s full-time faculty members are engaged in international initiatives, many pioneering new approaches to global health challenges such as Zika and Ebola, according to a press release.
Graduate and undergraduate research has also increased under Torabi’s direction.
In the 2014-15 academic year, nearly half of faculty publications included student co-authors, who are studying many of the most pressing public health challenges facing the nation and the globe, such as obesity and healthful eating, rural health and other health disparities, according to a press release.
Throughout the past five years, annual private giving is up 350 percent, and the school’s private endowment balance has doubled, with more than 50 percent of the bicentennial campaign goal of $30 million achieved, according to a press release.
Torabi’s retirement from the dean position will allow him to resume his personal research focus on the measurement and evaluation of school and public health education programs and factors associated with health behavior.
His research extends into health promotion and key factors related to individuals’ decisions in the prevention of drug abuse, cancer and HIV/AIDS infection.
His research (some co-authored) is published extensively in a variety of journals in the field, including American Journal of Health Behavior, American Journal of Health Education, Journal of School Health, Behavior Medicine and Health Education Journal, according to a press release.
He started his IU career in 1982 as a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Applied Health Science and moved through the ranks from assistant professor in 1984 to chancellor’s professor of applied health science in 1997.
Along the way, he acted as coordinator and then director of graduate studies; co-director of the Rural Center for Study and Promotion of HIV/STD Prevention and Institute for Drug Abuse Prevention; and director of the Center for Health and Safety Studies, among other roles and responsibilities, according to a press release.
Leo Smith
