The Community Health Department has undergone a major turnover for this semester, with two professors resigning and three hired to take their place.
Professors Bonnie Chakravorty and Charlene Galarneau both resigned. Chakravorty left to start a new community health graduate program at Tennessee State University. Galarneau is now at Wellesley College, teaching and researching in the women's studies department.
Chakravorty served as the program's internship coordinator. Internships are required for the over thirty students majoring in community health annually.
To fill the holes left by Chakravorty and Galarneau, the department hired Professor Linda Sprague Matrtinez on a full-time basis and Alissa Spielberg and Kalahn Taylor-Clark part-time.
Program director Edith Balbach said any department must adjust to the loss of key faculty, but that she is "very excited about the new people we brought in." The new professors, she said, will have "a significant impact on students." Martinez will take over Chakravorty's internship duties, which include teaching a seminar and overseeing the progress of student internships.
Martinez taught "Race, Ethnicity, and Health" in the department last spring and will be teaching it again this spring. She worked for the Office of Minority Health in the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, where she was involved in policy making.
It is this non-academic experience, Balbach said, that qualified Martinez to oversee the internship program. Martinez has "knowledge of how to teach a good class and also knowledge of how agencies and organizations work," Balbach said. "An internship director must combine these two skills."
Martinez began visiting the "very broad" list of places where community health students have had internships. She said on the whole the sites have been "very happy with [past] Tufts site visits and very happy with Dr. Chakravorty." Martinez said she has received "very positive feedback."
Martinez plans to expand the list of internship sites. She said the department has a good atmosphere, up-to-date with the field, and student-oriented.
Galarneau worked at Tufts for nine years. She was promoted to senior lecturer last year, and she had a secondary appointment at the School of Medicine. ""I'm very grateful for my experience at Tufts," she said. "The students are exceptional as are the faculty and staff."
Another issue for the revamped department to tackle is the group of advisees of the former professors.
Taylor-Clark, who is currently finishing her doctorate in health policy at Harvard University, was chosen to take on the majority of Galarneau's advisees. Taylor-Clark received her undergraduate and masters degrees from Tufts.
"She really knows the Tufts undergrad experience," Balbach said.
Taylor-Clark also worked as a teaching assistant for Professor Gary McKissick's course "Healthcare in America," and she has been the scholar in residence in Tilton Hall for the past three years.
"I love advising students," Taylor-Clark said. She added that exploring different options is one of the points of college, and she enjoys facilitating that process among students.
After her doctorate work ends this December, Taylor-Clark will be teaching two courses in the department, "Women in Health" and "The Politics of Health Disparities." She is not sure if she wants a career in academia. "[I have] done a lot of work that I really value... and want to share it with students," she said.
Spielberg has been teaching at Harvard for the last seven years, and she has also taught at Emerson College. She taught a course last semester in the Ex College called "Sex, Drugs, and Personal Rights: The Frontiers of Law, Medicine, and Society."
This semester she will be teaching "Health, Ethics, and Policy" in the Community Health Department.
"The students who are in my course already come to the topics well-armed with a great understanding of public health," Spielberg said. "I've already enjoyed getting to know the students here and look forward to meeting with more of them."
