Hood to open School of Health and Behavioral Sciences

By Zoe Finholm//

Hood College will be opening a new School of Health and Behavioral Sciences with an expected launch in fall 2022, according to Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Debbie Ricker. 

The School of Health and Behavioral Sciences will include nursing, public health and social work for undergraduate students, and nutrition and counseling for graduate students. 

The college has had a goal of reviewing the administrative and academic structures since 2017.

The school will initially consist of existing majors and areas of study. When a new major or minor is added, officials will analyze “enrollment projections, tuition revenue projections, and expense projections,” Ricker said. 

Currently, all academic departments are led by a chair who is a tenured faculty member of the department. Chairs are responsible for administrative operations, teaching, scholarships and service work, not leaving a lot of time for partnerships, grants or external advocacy, Ricker said. 

With the new school structure, an administrator would be assigned the majority of administrative responsibilities and function externally to support partnerships and grant funding, according to Ricker. 

Responses from professors has been “mixed,” Ricker said. 

Professors that support the addition of the school say that it will “help grow enrollment, bring resources to support our faculty and students, and drive curricular innovation,” Ricker said. People who do not support the addition of the new school are worried about “overall structural change and the impact this reorganization will have on important processes such as faculty evaluation, budgeting, space and resource allocation.”

Assistant Professor of Nursing Jennifer Cooper said, “I feel that the new school will allow nursing to work more collaboratively with other disciplines (such as public health & social work) and be more outward facing in our community.”