Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Position Description: Department Chair and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Description
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard Chan School) invites applications for the position of Department Chair and Tenured Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS). We seek an innovative scholar and visionary leader to direct a large, diverse, multidisciplinary department. The successful applicant will have an outstanding record of academic and research accomplishments, demonstrated leadership and administrative abilities, and a compelling vision for the department.

The Department and School
SBS has a mission to improve health throughout the lifespan, with a special emphasis on populations harmed by injustice. The SBS department brings together faculty trained in diverse disciplines whose research focuses on the social and structural determinants of health and behavioral outcomes, the development and evaluation of interventions and policies leading to the improvement of population health and health equity across the life course; the expertise encompassed involves theory, methods, and substantive knowledge. The department is a thriving community that is working collaboratively to build a healthier world in which there is improved health for all and reductions in social inequities in health. The department’s educational mission is to train both scholars and practitioners: scholars whose research will illuminate critical social and structural determinants of health and who will identify and test innovative policy and interventions; and practitioners who are skilled in designing, implementing, and evaluating health enhancing interventions in real-world clinical, community, and policy settings. The department is composed of 26 primary faculty, approximately 34 doctoral and 84 master’s students, 97 academic appointees, and 34 full-time staff members, and it includes 9 affiliated Centers, 2 affiliated interdisciplinary and interdepartmental concentrations, and 1 intradepartmental concentration.

SBS is one of nine academic departments at Harvard Chan School, which is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts, and the Chan School is home to more than 185 primary faculty and roughly 1,400 graduate-level students. Harvard Chan School goals—delivering evidence-based education, creating and sustaining an inclusive intellectual community, translating academic knowledge into impactful service and population-based solutions, and employing the most innovative communication strategies—embrace both the scale and difficulty of today’s public health challenges. By deploying key strengths in both the basic and social sciences, the School is able to confront the most pressing diseases of our time, to study their biopsychosocial foundations, and to address both individuals and entire populations. The goal is to consider health at the individual and population level and elucidate structural, institutional, and individual factors that influence health and thereby inform progress in clinical care, population health, and public policy for improving population health for all.  The core vision of the Harvard Chan School is: “Health, dignity, and justice for every human.”

The Candidate
The successful candidate will advance the department’s mission by fostering and expanding research activities, enriching the educational mission and trainee experience, attracting and mentoring early-career faculty, and providing strategic and tactical leadership at the levels of the department, School, and University. They will also be able to articulate a long-term vision for the future of the department to address existing and anticipated academic and research needs and to advance public health, both around the corner and around the world. As part of a world-class team of deans and department chairs, the chair of SBS will work laterally and vertically to address both broadly shared and distinctly local challenges and to advance the School’s mission of improving health and promoting equity so all people can thrive.

The incumbent will meet these goals in part through exhibiting strength in the following areas:

Leadership and Administration

·         Provide visionary leadership to the department that inspires and catalyzes excellence and innovation by faculty, staff, and trainees at all levels

·         In partnership with the Director of Administration, oversee and manage departmental operations, including budgeting, resource allocation, and strategic planning; and support a culture of research compliance and transparency in decision making

·         Develop and implement strategic plan for diversifying and expanding portfolio of funding to the department through grants, contracts, and gifts to support research, training, and career development for students and faculty at all levels

·         Play a key role in engagement with alumni and donors and stewardship of philanthropic relationships to support fundraising for the department and School

·         Set clear and consistent goals for department faculty, staff, administrators, students, and non-faculty researchers

·         Oversee strategic recruitment of new faculty members that will strengthen the focus of the department on critical issues

·         Oversee strategic curriculum development and planning for both required and elective departmental courses and foster strategic curricular and programmatic engagement with the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the jointly administered PhD programs

·         Oversee development of strategy for non-degree educational programs

·         Define, prioritize, and measure the effectiveness of key programs and core work areas

·         In partnership with the Dean and senior leadership, lead the department’s primary faculty, core committees, and flagship programs to manage change and navigate growth effectively and efficiently

·         Foster a collaborative, transparent, diverse, and inclusive culture within the department and School

Collaboration

·         Collaborate with the Dean and senior leadership to define and advance the School’s overarching strategic direction

·         Collaborate with the Dean and senior faculty to set high-level programmatic direction, including in new and existing initiatives across all departmental programs and endeavors

·         Foster a positive and supportive work environment that encourages innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration, including promoting efforts to obtain training grants, career-development grants for students and faculty at all stages, and other grants that build departmental research and pedagogic capacity to advance health equity

Communication

·         Create and model strong working relationships with programmatic and administrative leadership, faculty committees, affiliates, peer institutions, and external partners to support execution of programmatic initiatives

·         Represent and advocate for the department within the School and University by developing productive relationships with colleagues across the institution and contributing to Harvard-wide priorities and initiatives in line with internal goals and objectives

·         Represent the department to key audiences across the School, University, and beyond, clearly articulating strategic objectives and key impacts, and emphasizing its unique value to both the institution and the world

Basic Qualifications

·         Doctoral degree (e.g., PhD, MD) with scholarly expertise in relevant areas of public health, such as social and behavioral determinants of health, health and social policy, or health equity

·         Significant experience in procuring research and career-development funding, conducting academic public health research, teaching, administration, and leadership

·         Forward-thinking leadership skills and concomitant ability to communicate department and School mission and vision to a variety of stakeholders

·         Deep commitment to diversity and inclusion in and across all dimensions of public health

·         Well-developed ability to prioritize within an organizationally, intellectually, financially complex environment; comfortable making decisions in a multifactorial and dynamic financial climate

·         Experience handling sensitive and confidential information routinely and with the highest level of judgment; ability to have difficult conversations, to address and mediate conflict, and to provide highly customized mentorship across a diverse community

·         Flexibility to pivot due to unforeseen events or outcomes while maintaining core priorities and meeting critical benchmarks

Diversity Statement
At the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, we believe diversity is integral to the Harvard experience and our mission of improving public health education, research and policy. Diversity of cultural backgrounds, identities, lived experiences, beliefs, perspectives, and ways of understanding the world enriches our community and enables us to best meet the public health needs of the United States and the world. Ongoing learning and development related to diversity allows for both individual and institutional growth and is necessary to foster and sustain a culture of inclusion. To achieve this, we are committed to ensuring equitable access to opportunities for learning, living, and working at the Harvard Chan School. We maintain an unwavering dedication to diversity, inclusion, and belonging as core to our institutional values and to actively address racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, gender bias, and all forms of discrimination.

Please apply to: https://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/14103  Applications should be received no later than December 1, 2024, when the search committee will begin reviewing candidates.

For questions, please contact:

Megan Marchese| Faculty Affairs Project Manager

Office of Faculty Affairs  |  Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

marchese@hsph.harvard.edu

Additional information:

Key facts about the School

University and School faculty policies

Relevant employee benefits for faculty

Work/Life resources