Overview
The UF College of Public Health and Health Professions is focused on preserving, promoting, and improving the health and well-being of populations and individuals. The College is accredited as a school of public health by the Council on Education for Public Health. Since 2022, the College’s educational portfolio has expanded to 27 academic programs of study, including bachelor’s, master’s, PhD, and professional doctoral degrees, supplemented by a growing slate of minors and certificates. The student body has grown to nearly 3,000 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students, supported by over 180 faculty members.
The College is organized into eight departments: biostatistics; clinical and health psychology; environmental and global health; epidemiology; health services research, management, and policy; occupational therapy; physical therapy; and speech, language, and hearing sciences. It is also home to a deep portfolio of federally funded T32 training grants, focused on breathing research and therapeutics, movement disorders and neurorestoration, rehabilitation and neuromuscular plasticity, substance abuse, and team-based interdisciplinary cancer research, among other areas.
The Dean is the chief academic and administrative leader of the College, and works collaboratively with faculty, staff, and students to advance the College’s mission areas. The Dean is responsible for all matters related to the administration of the College, including academic programs, faculty, students, staff, facilities, budget, alumni relations, fundraising, and coordination and collaboration with other academic and operating units of UF and UF Health.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Maintain and enhance the stature of the College by ensuring that it continues to be at the forefront of research and in educating students who are prepared to be outstanding practitioners and leaders in public health and the health professions.
- Maintain high standards in faculty recruitment, appointment, promotion, and tenure in order to support excellence in research, teaching, and clinical practice in the professions supported by the College.
- Serve as a catalyst and advocate for innovative and impactful research.
- In collaboration with other UF and UF Health entities, create and implement exceptional and innovative programs of education, research, clinical practice, and service.
- Foster a student-centered culture that enhances effective teaching, engages students in faculty research, maintains a diverse and inclusive learning environment, builds strong relationships between students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and promotes leadership development.
- Maintain and enhance the financial health of the College through active representation with applicable state of Florida entities and raise the College’s visibility and obtain financial and other types of support from individuals, foundations, and corporations for initiatives, programmatic efforts, research, public service, faculty and student projects, student support, and discretionary activities.
DESIRED OUTCOMES
- Develop, in partnership with others and in alignment with the University, a forward-looking strategic plan for the College.
- Grow the research output of the College and strengthen engagement with University of Florida and UF Health research elements.
- Enhance educational programs to continue to achieve exceptional learning.
- Enhance the College’s national reputation by growing and strengthening the research, clinical, and service enterprises.
- Attract top faculty and staff to further elevate the quality of the College, and ensure best-in-class hiring, retention, development, and engagement practices.
IDEAL EXPERIENCE
Academic Leadership in a Multidisciplinary Setting
Progressive executive management experience in a leading academic or multidisciplinary institution affiliated with public health and/or health professions. Demonstrated ability to lead across the diverse disciplines represented in the College, and to integrate the College’s contributions within a broader academic health center.
Recruitment, Retention, and Development of Talent
Demonstrated success recruiting, retaining, and developing outstanding cohorts of faculty, staff, and students across a range of disciplines and career stages. Substantive experience leading faculty appointment, promotion, and tenure processes; building robust mentoring and professional development pathways; and supporting the engagement and advancement of all members of the College community.
Research Enterprise Growth
Proven ability to grow and sustain a high-performing research enterprise, including substantive experience competing for and managing NIH and other federal funding portfolios. Demonstrated success developing interdisciplinary research programs, supporting early-career investigators, and leveraging shared resources to advance translational impact at scale.
Fundraising
Success generating resources through foundation grants, corporate partnerships, and philanthropic outreach.
Personal Scholarship and Achievement
An earned doctoral or terminal degree with achievements commensurate with appointment at the full Professor level in a discipline represented within the College, with a preference for a public health professional.
About University of Florida
The University of Florida
The University of Florida (UF) is the flagship university for the state of Florida, the nation’s third most populous state. In recent years, UF has been consistently ranked as a top-10 public university by U.S. News & World Report. Located in Gainesville, UF has 16 colleges, a major academic health center, championship-winning athletics, a top-ranked undergraduate online program, and, in keeping with its land-grant mission, one of the nation’s most comprehensive agriculture and natural resources programs. All units are based at the university’s 2,000-acre campus, which joins a historic core with advanced facilities and preserved natural areas and connects to adjacent innovation, commercial, and residential districts.
UF has over 60,000 students, 32,000 employees, a $10 billion annual budget, and more than 140 mission‑focused units across the state of Florida. It is one of only two public universities in Florida belonging to the Association of American Universities (comprising the nation’s 71 leading public and private research universities). UF has more than 6,700 faculty members, with distinguished records in teaching, research, and service, including 25 Eminent Scholar Chairs, 37 elected members of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and 91 elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2025, UF research expenditures reached a record $1.33 billion. As an example of campus‑wide growth and innovation, UF has developed major initiatives in leading-edge computation and artificial intelligence, including the recent opening of the multidisciplinary Malachowsky Hall for Data Science & Information Technology, which leverages HiPerGator, a >70,000 core massive computer cluster.
Several qualities distinguish UF among today’s leading public research universities. The first is its comprehensive breadth on a single campus, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration. The second is its traditionally strong support from the state of Florida, which has consistently funded UF’s drive to become one of the nation’s best public research universities. UF’s third exceptional quality is its dynamism. UF is undergoing rapid transformation as it pursues its overarching aspiration "to be a premier university that the state, nation, and world look to for leadership."
UF Health
UF Health, the University of Florida’s academic health system, is the country’s only academic health center with six health colleges – Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health and Health Professions, and Veterinary Medicine – and a partner teaching hospital located on a contiguous campus. The colleges, major research centers, institutes, and the clinical enterprise focus on building collaborative specialized clinical services centered on quality, innovation, and the expansion of knowledge. As a preeminent academic health center, UF Health’s vision is to optimize its collective expertise to improve patient care, education, discovery, and the health of the community. This success is predicated on research-based, multidisciplinary, cross-college programs.
UF Health is a world leader in interdisciplinary research, generating more than half of UF’s total research awards. In addition to the six health colleges, 11 major health-related research centers and institutes are designed to create synergies and collaborative research opportunities, including the National Cancer Institute‑designated UF Health Cancer Institute and the Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation and Technology, located in Jupiter. Research activities reflect a depth of purpose by focusing on the translational nature of biomedical research, following fundamental research to clinical research to patient care.
