VIII. FACULTY

A. CHARACTERISTICS, PERSPECTIVES, QUALIFICATIONS

Criterion VIII.A. The School shall have a clearly defined faculty which, by virtue of its size, multidisciplinary nature, educational preparation, research and teaching competence, and practice experience, is able to fully support the School’s mission, goals, and objectives.

Documentation

  1. Identification in a table or chart of faculty who support the degree programs offered by the school, indicating at least, professorial rank, tenure status, percent time, earned degrees, universities at which degrees were earned, disciplinary area of degree, area of teaching responsibility, area of research interest, and selected demographic data (gender, ethnicity).
  1. Description of the manner in which the faculty complement integrates perspectives from the field of practice.
  1. Identification of outcome measures by which the school may judge the qualifications of its faculty complement, along with data regarding the performance of the school against those measures over the last three years.
  1. Assessment of the extent to which this criterion is met.

VIII.A.1. Identification of faculty who support the degree programs offered by the School.

The School has 213 faculty members. Faculty are defined as full-time University employees with a professorial or research scientist appointment in one of the six departments of the School. A total of 92 (43%) of these faculty members also hold joint or interdisciplinary appointments in other departments and centers of the University. (Data are based on the March 2002 faculty complement.)

Table VIII.A.1 presents a list of the School’s 213 faculty members, and indicates for each:

  • Name
  • Department
  • Highest degree
  • Year of highest degree
  • University at which highest degree was earned
  • Disciplinary area of degree
  • Full-time equivalent
  • Title
  • Joint/interdisciplinary appointments
  • Tenure status
  • Race/ethnicity
  • Gender

The number of faculty in each department is as follows:

  • Biostatistics22
  • Environmental Health Sciences 32
  • Epidemiology50
  • Health Policy and Management20
  • Population and Family Health37
  • Sociomedical Sciences52

A total of 30% of the faculty hold the position of professor (including clinical and unmodified titles) or senior research scientist, 24% are associate professors or research scientists, and 46% of the faculty are assistant professors or associate research scientists. Eighteen percent of the School’s faculty members have tenure and 22% are tenure track. The 213 full-time University faculty members represent 183.6 FTEs.

Not included in the above faculty count are the adjunct faculty and lecturers who contribute to the teaching, research, and service mission of the School, and who hold one of the following appointments:

  • Adjunct faculty
  • Lecturers, senior lecturers, and special lecturers

The adjunct faculty and lecturers represent 11.8 FTEs and comprise 6% of the School’s FTE faculty. The full-time University faculty account for the remaining 94%. The analyses in this chapter focus only on the full-time University faculty, whereas the analyses in Criterion IV.2 and IV.10 were based on the total FTE complement. In addition, Criterion IV.2 presented, for each department, the FTE faculty numbers for full-time University faculty and for the adjuncts and lecturers.

The School Bulletin (Appendix IX.A.3 for a hardcopy and available on the School’s website) lists, for full-time University faculty and adjunct faculty: department, all earned degrees, and the University and year in which the degree was earned. In addition, the Experts Guide (Appendix VIII.A.1 for a hardcopy and available on the School’s website) indicates faculty research interests. For lecturers, the School Bulletin lists the department and the highest degree.

VIII.A.2. Description of the manner in which the faculty complement integrates perspectives from the field of practice.

As was shown in Criterion VII, the School has a demonstrated record of leadership in public health practice. It is essential to the mission of the School to recruit, promote, and retain faculty with expertise in the field of public health practice. This goal has been aided by the School’s title structure for professors. As described in detail in the next section, the School has three forms of professorial titles:

Clinical prefix, (e.g., Clinical Professor of Epidemiology)

Clinical suffix, (e.g., Professor of Clinical Epidemiology)

Unmodified, (e.g., Professor of Epidemiology).

All three variations of the professorial title require that the faculty member is involved in some aspect of teaching and student mentoring.

The clinical prefix title is designed for faculty primarily involved in public health practice and the scholarship of application. Practice is interpreted as activities directly affecting the health of the public, such as monitoring the health of the public, conducting needs assessment research, direct service delivery, and carrying out evaluations of ongoing health interventions. A total of 12% of all professorial appointments are clinical prefixes. The proportion of clinical prefix appointments at each professorial level is as follows: professor, 9%; associate professor, 22%; assistant professor, 9%.

The clinical suffix title is designed for faculty engaged in both the scholarship of application and the scholarship of discovery. That is, those conducting original research and engaged in activities that affect the health of the public. A total of 41% of all professorial appointments are clinical suffixes. The proportion of clinical suffix appointments at each professorial level is as follows: professor, 33%; associate professor, 53%; assistant professor, 41%.

The unmodified title is for faculty engaged in the scholarship of discovery—the conduct and publication of original research. A total of 46% of all professorial appointments are unmodified. The proportion of unmodified appointments at each professorial level is as follows: professor, 58%; associate professor, 24%; assistant professor, 50%.

In 2000, the School gained much greater control of its appointment and promotion process when it became a Faculty of Public Health. Prior to that change, all School appointments had to be reviewed by the Faculty of Health Sciences Committee on Appointments and Promotions. Subsequent to that change, the School’s Committee on Appointments and Promotions became the final point of review for all clinical prefix and suffix appointments. Gaining control of this aspect of the process is important because it enabled public health faculty to make promotion judgments for those whose work emphasizes public health practice.

Tenured appointments, which can only occur for faculty in the unmodified track, are granted by the University, and require a review at the University level. Once public health tenure cases have been approved by the relevant School department, candidates are reviewed by committees at three levels review: Public Health, Health Sciences, and University.

VIII.A.3. Outcome measures of faculty qualifications.

Faculty members are expected to hold appropriate advanced degrees and to demonstrate accomplishment in scholarship, teaching, and service to a degree appropriate to the level of rank and type of appointment. The School’s Committee on Appointments and Promotions evaluates all candidates for appointment and promotion on the basis of their contributions to and leadership in: scholarship, practice, teaching, attracting sponsored funding, and by the use of comparison letters in which experts in the same field evaluate the candidate along with his or her peers in the field.

Given the size and diversity of the faculty, it is difficult to fully summarize, in the aggregate, their qualifications and accomplishments. Strong indicators of the faculty’s qualifications are presented elsewhere: 1) the increasing number and diversity of research and service grant awards (Criterion VI); 2) the active School involvement in professional practice and service initiatives (Criterion VII); 3) the large number of articles, books and chapters authored each year (Resource File).

In this section we present data on seven additional outcome measures assessing the qualifications of the faculty complement to meet the teaching, service, and research missions of the School. The past three years of data for each of these indicators is presented in Table VIII.A.3.

Size of faculty as a whole and by department

As shown in Table VIII.A.3, the number of faculty members has increased 14% (from 187 to 213), over the past three years. Moreover, each department continues to have more than a critical mass of faculty, with the smallest department having 20 professors. Over the last three years, five of the School’s six departments increased in size and the sixth remained stable. As planned, the most sizable increases occurred in Biostatistics (from 16 to 22) and in Epidemiology (from 39 to 50).

Faculty rank

The School strives to have a balance between senior experienced faculty, who are leaders in their field, and junior faculty members, who continually bring new methodological, theoretical, and practice-based perspectives to the School. As indicated in the table, the School continues to have just over half of its faculty in the professor and associate professor ranks and just under half the faculty at the assistant professor level.

Faculty with clinical titles

The School strives to have a balance between faculty with clinical and public health practice expertise, and faculty with expertise in original research. One indication of that diversity of skills is the distribution among clinical and unmodified titles. As shown in the table, over the past three years the faculty has been evenly divided between those with clinical titles and those with unmodified/research titles.

Joint appointments

Because public health is inherently an interdisciplinary enterprise, the School believes that it is of value to have a substantial proportion of faculty with expertise and recognition in more than one field, as demonstrated by holding a joint appointment. In essence, we want to be a large part of Columbia and we want Columbia to be a large part of us. Public health has a higher percentage of interdisciplinary appointments than any other unit at Columbia, ranging from 43-45% over the past three years.

Table VIII.A.3

Description of Full-Time Faculty Complement

2000-2002

Faculty Characteristics

/ 2000 / 2001 / 2002
Number of Faculty Members / 187 / 207 / 213
Number of Faculty by Department
Biostatistics / 16 / 20 / 22
Environmental Health Sciences / 30 / 31 / 32
Epidemiology / 39 / 48 / 50
Health Policy and Management / 21 / 19 / 20
Population and Family Health / 33 / 37 / 37
Sociomedical Sciences / 48 / 52 / 52
% Faculty by Rank
Professor/Senior Res Scientist / 34% / 32% / 30%
Associate Professor/ Res Scientist / 24% / 23% / 24%
Assistant Professor/ Assoc. Res Scientist / 42% / 44% / 46%
% Faculty by Clinical Title
Clinical Prefix / 15% / 12% / 11%
Clinical Suffix / 34% / 37% / 38%
Unmodified / 41% / 43% / 42%
Research track / 10% / 8% / 9%
% Faculty with Joint Appointment / 45% / 46% / 43%
% Faculty by Highest Degree
Doctoral degree / 72% / 71% / 70%
MD/DDS/JD / 24% / 25% / 27%
Masters degree / 4% / 4% / 3%

Average Summary Course Evaluation*

/ 3.24 / 3.29 / 3.28

*Results are based on spring term course evaluations, to permit year-to-year comparability. Mean response, across courses, to the summary question concerning “overall rating of the course,” with response categories: excellent (4); good (3); fair (2); poor (1).

Appropriate advanced degrees

Faculty members are expected to hold appropriate advanced degrees, with the goal that almost all faculty members will have either a doctoral degree or a terminal degree in a relevant applied field (MD, DDS, JD). As shown in the table, for each of the past three years, approximately 70% of the faculty held doctoral degrees, 25% held MD, DDS or JD degrees, and for less than 5% the highest degree was a masters degree.

Course evaluations

A goal of the School is to have a faculty with strong teaching skills. As part of our system of course evaluations, described in greater detail under criterion VII.B.4, each semester we compute, and communicate to the faculty, the average course evaluation, across all courses, on a few key summary measures. One such question concerns “overall rating of the course,” with response categories: excellent (4); good (3); fair (2); poor (1). The average response on this item has fluctuated within a very narrow range over the past three years, between 3.24 and 3.30. Thus, the average course in the School receives a rating between good and excellent.

VIII.A.4. Assessment of the extent to which this criterion is met.

The School perceives that this criterion is met.

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