Augusta University announces dean for new School of Public Health
At the end of a national search, Dr. Teresa M. Waters has officially been announced as the inaugural dean for Augusta University’s new School of Public Health.
Waters, who currently serves as the chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health, will begin her new role this upcoming Fall semester in August.
Waters said she is immensely excited to be joining the university’s family at such an opportune time in order to create new programs for the community’s benefit.
“I’m honored to serve as the inaugural dean at Augusta University’s School of Public Health and thrilled to work with the exceptional faculty, staff and students who will call the School of Public Health home,” said Waters. “I look forward to working with campus leadership, faculty, staff, students and alumni, as well as community partners and stakeholders, to position public health at AU as a leader in transforming population health across Georgia, and around the world.”
Waters will be charged with combining Augusta University’s foundational pieces into a united goal, which is on schedule to begin July of this year. The university is already home to the Institute of Public and Preventive Health, the Center for Rural Health and the statewide Area Health Education Centers. The College of Allied Health Sciences offers a Master of Public Health degree and a doctorate in Applied Health Sciences, while the Medical College of Georgia’s Department of Population Health Sciences houses multiple graduate programs, and the College of Education and Human Development offers a health promotion undergraduate program.
“Our new School of Public Health will better focus our university’s incredible foundational pieces into a united goal, and Dr. Waters is well suited to take on the responsibilities of this task,” said Augusta University President Brooks Keel. “As we work to continue to meet our aspirational imperatives, including a top-60 NIH ranking by 2030, it is important to recruit and tap into the knowledge of someone of Dr. Waters’ caliber. She also has a proven track record of advancing departments and units under her purview, and I look forward to working with her to continue to offer our students and patients world-class education and care.”
Waters’ previous experience in public health includes: hiring more than a dozen faculty for the UK’s Department of Health Management and Policy, serving as interim director of the Center for Health Services Research, Implementation Science and Policy, and engaging in high-level leadership at six UK colleges.
Augusta University Executive Vice President and Provost Neil MacKinnon said Waters will bring a new wealth of leadership experience to public health policies, education, research and faculty developments.
“This new school is a monumental undertaking, but I am excited for what it will do for Augusta University and our students, the citizens of Georgia and beyond,” he said.
With various scopes of expertise from holistic to community levels, Waters said public health is a very interdisciplinary field that requires an enormous amount of teamwork and cooperation amongst many different colleges; she hopes to further integrate and focus Augusta University’s efforts by listening to feedback, and honing in on what is wanted and needed by the community.
“There are some great things going on at AU, and they have been working very hard to line up the pieces for this new School of Public Health,” she said. “It’s kind of a dream job to come in and work with everybody in this new position. A lot of the work has already been done; I think there’s some more work to do, and I’m excited to be the person.”
Planning on utilizing people’s different skill sets, Waters said she is aiming to build a national facility that will seek to improve health on a mass scale.
“I’m taking those different tool sets – those who are quantitative, the folks who do dissemination and implementation science, the people who are great at analyzing data, the folks who are really good at doing qualitative work – and we’re asking those big questions about how to improve health at a very global level,” she said.
For right now, Waters is looking forward to doing more groundwork for the new school, and is greatly anticipating picking out the new curricula for the new programs. With her past experience in partnering with the Air Force, Waters said she wants to make sure she also takes input from the nearby military base.
“This is such an opportunity to build something important, new and impactful,” she said. “That’s what really excites me the most – the potential. I think it’s going to be really important in those first few months to talk to as many people as I can to find out about the opportunities, and the needs of what the community priorities are, including the military. I know they have some incredible stuff going on relating to cyber security, so there’s just a lot of great overlap.”
