A Year of Gratitude, Progress, and Purpose
Dean Adnan Hyder shares his thoughts on the School’s many successes of the past year, and why he’s looking forward to the year ahead.
As I reflect on my first year as Dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, and as we prepare to celebrate the School’s 50th anniversary, I am filled with gratitude, pride, and optimism for what lies ahead. From my first days at BUSPH, I have been inspired by the warmth of our community, the generosity with which you welcomed me, and the extraordinary commitment that our faculty, students, staff, alumni, advisors, and partners bring to our mission every day. Together, we ended the year with real momentum. I want to take this opportunity to reflect on some of what we accomplished together, while also looking candidly at the challenges and opportunities before us.
Together, we developed a new strategy map—a living framework that captures our shared aspirations and will help guide our priorities in the years ahead. We strengthened our leadership team by elevating experienced colleagues, welcoming new leaders with fresh perspectives, and aligning parts of the School to support greater collaboration, clarity and operational excellence. And we have all come together to be fiscally responsible and ensure a balanced budget.
Despite a difficult and rapidly changing research environment, our faculty expended more than $72 million in research funding this past year—a powerful reflection of the caliber and relevance of scholarship across BUSPH, and of the confidence our funders place in our work. Just as importantly, this achievement reflects the collaborative and convergent spirit that defines our School: a community committed to bringing different perspectives together to generate knowledge that improves lives.
We also took meaningful steps to strengthen and expand access to public health education. We relaunched our online MPH program, extending the reach of a BUSPH education to a broader community of future public health leaders. In response to what we heard from students, faculty and employers, we also redesigned our on-campus MPH, reducing it from 48 to 42 credits so that students can move through the program more efficiently while continuing to receive the rigorous, high-quality education that defines BUSPH. We expanded the reach of our educational thought leadership through the launch of Teaching Public Health, a collective resource for public health education and training. And I am proud of the School’s strong showing in our reaccreditation review by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), reflecting the quality and integrity of our academic programs and the strength of our institutional foundation.
Across the School, we also strengthened the structures that support our mission. We established new policies for our Think, Teach, Do units; expanded leadership capacity in policy and practice, as well as in wellness and DEIJ; and continued to strengthen the ways we support students from the moment they arrive through graduation and into their careers. Faculty and staff contributed thoughtful ideas about how we can further advance our education and practice portfolios through Dean’s Task Forces, and that work will continue in the year ahead.
Even as we celebrate this progress, we must be clear-eyed about the challenges before us. Like many peer institutions, we are navigating changes in international student enrollment, with important implications for the diversity of perspectives, talent, and lived experience that enrich our School. We are also confronting broader enrollment pressures affecting schools and programs of public health nationwide, as student expectations, workforce needs, and the higher education landscape continue to evolve.
Our longstanding global collaborations are also being tested by a changing environment for international engagement, research partnerships, and funding. BUSPH remains deeply committed to learning across borders and to the global exchange of ideas that advances health. These challenges are not ours alone, but how we respond to them will help define our future.
These headwinds are real and I do not underestimate them. Yet after a year spent listening to, and learning from, our community—your ideas, your commitment, and your belief in the mission of public health—I am more confident than ever in our path forward. BUSPH has the talent, values, and determination not simply to meet this moment, but to help shape what public health education, research, and practice can become for the next generation.
As we mark our 50th anniversary, we have much to celebrate – and even more to look forward to. Thank you for the welcome you have given me throughout the year, for the candor and partnership you have shared, and above all for the work you do every day, in ways both visible and unseen, to advance the health and well-being of communities here in Boston and around the world. I am grateful to be part of this community, and I look forward to all that we will accomplish together in the years ahead.
Boston University School of Public Health
Source: https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2026/a-year-of-gratitude-progress-and-purpose