For the ASPPH Doctoral Educator Skills Working Group

The term professor is derived from profess, meaning “to teach.” Yet today, public health professors face many challenges, including balancing teaching and research opportunities and obligations, navigating instability in the current public health environment, and adapting to technological advances that are rapidly changing teaching and learning in public health.

The processes of teaching and learning are undergoing rapid changes that may leave the next generation of university professors ill-prepared to take on the new and evolving roles expected of them. Today, being an educator requires more than on-the-job training. Schools and programs of public health must prepare the next generation of public health academicians to address current and future challenges and help ensure the continued success of academic public health.

These challenges are being driven by fundamental changes, including:

• The reallocation of resources away from research, especially public health research and research of population-wide importance.
• Changes in the nature of teaching brought about by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), online education, badges and microcredentials, and the rapidly evolving information and misinformation landscape.
• Changes in the nature of learning brought about by GenAI, social media, career orientation, grade inflation, and other factors.

A national conversation within public health is needed to rethink and redefine doctoral education, better prepare graduates for professorial roles, and place educator skills on equal footing with research skills.

Educator Skills for Public Health PhDs

Only a small minority of public health PhD programs require a core curriculum in educator skills. A number of schools of public health are experimenting with approaches to integrating educator skills into doctoral training. Examples include:

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg has developed the Gordis Teaching Fellowship, which provides supervision and support for doctoral students teaching undergraduate elective courses in their areas of specialization.
• The University of Maryland has developed a core, for-credit curriculum in educator skills for all doctoral students.
• Boston University has led efforts to develop new educational approaches to implement Framing the Future: Education for Public Health 2030 (Framing the Future 2030). Two new required courses for doctoral students—one focused on pedagogy and curriculum development and another involving mentored teaching—are being introduced in fall 2026.
• Oklahoma University has integrated educator skills into its Hudson Public Health Fellows Program.
• Washington University in Saint Louis is developing a program for MPH and PhD students that will provide supervised teaching opportunities, incorporate educator skills, and create a pathway to paid teaching roles.
• George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health offers two noncredit courses to support doctoral student teaching and is planning a core educator skills program for doctoral students, along with a selective Educational Fellows program that will include an educational project and mentored teaching.

Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) students, as well as PhD students, could benefit from a greater focus on educator skills. The substantial growth of undergraduate public health education, coupled with an increased focus on career development and community experience, suggests that DrPH graduates may have expanding roles in teaching undergraduate courses as full-time, part-time, or adjunct faculty members. CEPH’s inclusion of educator skills in its DrPH requirements provides an additional rationale for including DrPH students in these efforts.

Well-developed educator skills programs should provide major benefits for undergraduate public health education. There are now as many bachelor’s degree graduates as MPH graduates each year. There is a growing need for new PhD and DrPH graduates who have educator skills and supervised experience teaching undergraduates. Programs that combine evidence-based content on teaching and learning with supervised, hands-on teaching experience are key to meeting this need.

ASPPH has approved a formal “conversation” during 2026 and 2027 that will engage the full spectrum of ASPPH members and constituents as an initial step toward an ASPPH Doctoral Educator Skills initiative. The ASPPH Doctoral Educator Skills Working Group will help guide the initiative and work closely with the ASPPH Education Committee.

The conversation will include activities such as:

• A session at ASPPH’s 2027 national meeting highlighting existing educator skills programs.
• An ASPPH webinar examining the need for doctoral educator skills, as well as successes and lessons learned in implementing programs.
• Input and information from the ASPPH Academic Affairs Section on doctoral educator skills programs.
• Feedback from the ASPPH Undergraduate Network on the potential for doctoral educator skills programs to benefit undergraduate public health programs.
• Information about existing and planned doctoral educator skills programs in public health, along with relevant insights from existing ASPPH data.

If the conversation generates encouragement and support for a full-scale ASPPH initiative, a second-phase plan could be developed for 2028 and 2029. This implementation phase could include data collection, small-grant support for innovative programs, online ASPPH educational programming, and the development of a support structure to encourage implementation.

Let the conversation begin.

To share information about existing or planned doctoral educator skills programs, or to learn more about the Doctoral Educator Skills (DES) initiative, contact Richard Riegelman at Riegel@gwu.edu.