Students, Alumni, and Friends,

I have exciting news to report from HBHE. Our health disparities search ended with hiring Dr. Derek Griffith as an Assistant Professor beginning in this Fall. Dr. Griffith was a Kellogg Community Scholar before joining the Prevention Research Center as Associate Director of Evaluation. He recently received a career development award from the American Cancer Society. He will be teaching courses on evaluation and health disparities. Please join me in welcoming Derek to the teaching faculty in the Department.

Kudos also go to Dr. Barbara Israel who won this year's SPH Teaching Award. Thanks to all the students and alumni who supported her nomination with heartfelt letters providing testimony to the many contributions Barbara has played in their professional development.

I am also delighted to announce that one of our graduates, Nicole Adelman (MPH, 1995), was elected to the Alumni Board of the school.

This year we also offered some workshops on skill-based course including focus group methodology, presentation skills, and application of statistics in health education. We plan to offer some workshops every year as a supplement to our regular course offerings. The workshops are voluntary and they are not graded.

Finally, this year we graduated 55 MPH students (including 13 MPH/MSW dual degrees) and 4 doctoral students. We are looking forward to next year's class of students that will include 77 MPH and 10 doctoral students. Please join me in congratulating these students past and present for commencing on the next chapter in their professional development.

I would be remiss if I closed before congratulating the outstanding job both our faculty and staff have done this year, and especially Shirley Hatto who completed 30 years of service to the university this past year.

Have a great summer!

Marc Zimmerman