I’m pleased to announce Professor Nancy Sherwood as our new School of Public Health (SPH) associate dean for research. She will start in this role on June 15, overlapping with Professor Marizen Ramirez’s announced departure later this month.

The associate dean for research is a critical school-wide position that reports directly to me and serves as a key member of the SPH leadership team. As associate dean, Nancy will facilitate research collaborations critical to advancing the school’s scientific excellence, research capacity, and mission to shape a healthier and more equitable world.

In her new role, Nancy will collaborate with community partners and leadership and colleagues across SPH and the University to:

• Expand and develop new public health research opportunities, especially those designed to advance health equity and interdisciplinary team science;
• Support faculty in developing their research skills and exploring new research funding opportunities; and
• Provide opportunities for faculty to explore the scientific evolution of public health research areas and implications for research development and leadership across the school and University.

Nancy, who initially joined the SPH Division of Epidemiology and Community Health in 1996 and returned in 2017 after serving as a senior investigator and director of scientific development at the HealthPartners Institute, brings a strong NIH-funded research background to this role as a trained clinical psychologist with experience in intervention design, implementation, and evaluation. She is currently the co-director of the SPH Healthy Weight Research Center, and director of the CTSI-Ed Pre-K Discovery Scholars Program.

Nancy studies the development and evaluation of behavioral obesity prevention and treatment interventions across the lifespan with a focus on engaging lower income, ethnically diverse children and their parents. A prominent theme of her work is integrating obesity treatment and prevention interventions into healthcare settings and creating connections between health systems and community-based interventions. Her leadership abilities in this area are evident in her extensive work and partnerships with HealthPartners throughout her career and chairing the Epidemiology and Community Health Research Committee for the past five years.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to Marizen for her tireless work over the past two years building the SPH Office of Research and strengthening the infrastructure, collaborations, and systems that support our research enterprise. Nancy will step into this position at a time of great opportunity for our school as we look to welcome a new UMN president this summer and a new SPH dean over the coming months.

Please join me in welcoming Nancy to her new role at SPH!

Sincerely,

Tim Beebe
Interim Dean and Mayo Professor