U of S public health school should merge

The University of Saskatchewan’s School of Public Health is “unsustainable” in its current form and should probably merge with a similar university department, says a group of external reviewers.

“Ultimately all involved will have to put aside their personal concerns and histories and commit to supporting the plan that is selected. No faculty, unit or school can have the luxury of sitting back and waiting to see how things unfold before deciding whether to participate,” the reviewers wrote in a report released this week.

Interim Provost Ernie Barber is putting together a task force to determine the university’s next step. It must report back to him by Oct. 15.

“The do-nothing alternative is more than obviously not on the table,” Barber said.

The fate of the school was a key trigger to the unrest that thrust the U of S into the international spotlight one year ago. The tension Created in 2007, the university’s School of Public Health (SPH) has had a rocky existence.

A push to rapidly expand the Master of Public Health program prompted dozens of student complaints about bad teaching, harassment, and disorganized courses. Infighting escalated to faculty and staff filing harassment complaints against one another. No one was ever disciplined.

The reviewers say the school’s other programs didn’t get the attention they needed to grow.

University administrators later said then-executive director Prof. Robert Buckingham should have done more to resolve the problems.

The now-defunct TransformUS plan proposed moving SPH into the College of Medicine, prodding Buckingham to publicly oppose the plan in May 2014.

He compared the move to putting healthy children in bed with a sick child.

University administrators fired Buckingham for speaking out, escorted him from campus, and revoked his tenure, which sparked an international uproar.

The fallout toppled university president Ilene Busch-Vishniac and provost Brett Fairbairn.

Buckingham regained his faculty job, but not his administrative post. He’s currently on administrative leave. The report With the TransformUS cost-cutting plan abandoned, university administrators hired three public health professors from other Canadian universities and U of S agriculture Prof. Bob Tyler to review whether SPH was doing what it was originally intended to do.

The reviewers say the school has strayed from its original mission — a conclusion disputed by the school’s faculty. The report also says SPH isn’t working well with others inside or outside the university.

They also conclude the school doesn’t have the resources to do its job properly. They lay out four options, three of which involve merging the school with the College of Medicine’s department of community health and epidemiology under various bodies. The fourth option is for the university to pour more money into the school. The provost Barber says a 10-member task force, along with all health sciences deans, will have to agree on a plan they can all live with. It will most likely result in the creation of a new university body or unit, he said. Faculty will have to adapt.

“We live and die for our students. We live and die for our disciplines. Department structures and school structures are only there to give us the vehicle to do that,” Barber said.

Any structural changes must be approved by the university council. SPH faculty In a written reply to the review, 15 SPH professors say they favour the option of community health and epidemiology faculty moving into the school, a conclusion Prof. George Mutwiri says was “very unanimous.”

The need for a merger is no surprise, and he was pleased to see it in writing, Mutwiri said.

The reviewers say this option gives the school a better shot at accreditation, and would better allow for collaboration with other disciplines. The College of Medicine Dean of medicine Preston Smith could not be reached Wednesday. Smith told the reviewers he wants the school to become part of the college of medicine to ensure professors will be available to teach in the college, and meet the medical school’s accreditation standards.