The College of Public and Allied Health has been a part of East Tennessee State University’s campus for more than 45 years, but that is all about to change. The Public Health Department is in the process of separating from its current collective college to form the School of Public Health.
The purpose of the split, among many things, is to establish the department as an accredited college, which can only happen if the department separates from Allied Health, said Dr. Creg Bishop, interim dean for the College of Public and Allied Health. “It will be the first College of Public Health in the state of Tennessee,” Bishop said. “When you become an accredited college of public health, it opens up a whole different category of funding opportunities. It brings us up to a higher level to compete for different types of grants. It also allows a college to be able to hire faculty that are the types of faculty members that will go after research dollars.”
The new status will be a positive move, said Betty Grice, coordinator for the College of Public and Allied Health. “However,” she said, “we are still in the very early stages.”
The department is in its second year of a seven-year plan and should be fully accredited between the fifth and seventh year, Bishop said.
Since November 2005, the department’s search committee, headed by Dr. Ron Franks, has been interviewing candidates for the school’s dean position. “This week we will finally be done interviewing our sixth and final candidate,” said senior Wyeth Lawson, member of the dean search committee. “The new dean will not only serve as the head of the College of Public and Allied Health until the split, but will be charged with helping to form the plan that will turn the college into an accredited school of health.”
Out of a pool of six dean candidates, one candidate has been offered the position and is negotiating, Bishop said. The new dean will take his or her position no later than July first.
The eventual College of Public Health will include the academic departments of environmental health, health sciences, community health, public health administration, and biostatistics and epidemiology. “As of now, the college should stay on Lamb Hall, but of course, funding and additional staff could merit a new location,” Lawson said.
In addition to a new dean, public health department officials are searching for six more faculty members to join the future College of Public Health.
The department will need at least 25 faculty members who are experts in one of the five departments that the college encompasses, Bishop said. “The current faculty is becoming more and more excited about the college,” he said. “They are already starting to write more grants and bring in outside speakers to talk about the kinds of subjects we need to be brought up to speed on.”
Public health will also have to add three doctoral programs before it can become accredited. The department is already working on approving two of those three programs through the Tennessee Board of Regents.
“By the time a college gets accredited, you have to have one student that has graduated through one of your doctoral programs, and at least two students enrolled in your other doctoral programs,” Bishop said.
The new college won’t really affect the students on campus now since they will mostly be graduated by the time this all comes together, Bishop said. “I think you’ll see us becoming more selective and increasing in numbers as we can afford to,” he said. “I think we’re going to get a more competitive admission of students in public health.”
Since the Department of Public Health will be branching off, the remaining College of Allied Health will undergo some changes. Of those changes, one could include a new department title, tentatively named the College of Health Related Professions. The college will encompass the academic departments of radiography, communicative disorders, cardiopulmonary, dental hygiene and physical therapy.

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