Edward F. Lawlor, Ph.D., dean of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor, has named Enola Proctor, Ph.D., associate dean for faculty, and Debra Haire-Joshu, Ph.D., associate dean for research.
“These faculty appointments will build our capacity to support junior faculty, enhance the intellectual life of the school and promote transdisciplinary research,” Lawlor said.
Proctor, the Frank J. Bruno Professor of Social Work Research and a scholar at the Institute of Public Health, will assure that each junior faculty member has a plan and support system for mentoring, professional development, excellence in teaching and scholarly feedback.
She also will be working with the Brown School faculty to build collaborations and opportunities to present and engage each other’s research and help faculty members extend the applications of their research for impact on practice and policy.
Proctor, a leader in the field of mental health services research and the social work profession, joined the Brown School faculty in 1977 and most recently served as associate dean for research.
She has led the Brown School’s Center for Mental Health Services Research for 16 years. She currently leads an Implementation and Dissemination Research Core for the Washington University ICTS program, and an NIMH-funded nationwide institute for training researchers in implementation research methods.
Haire-Joshu, professor of social work and of medicine and a scholar at the Institute for Public Health, will lead the Brown School’s grants development and research administration.
She will work to identify new opportunities for transdisciplinary research and collaborations both within the Brown School and across the University.
Haire-Joshu is an internationally renowned scholar of health behavior who develops population-wide interventions to reduce obesity and prevent diabetes, particularly among underserved youth.
Through a secondary appointment at the School of Medicine, she directs the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research and serves as associate director of the Diabetes Research and Training Center.
Haire-Joshu joined the Brown School in 2008 and recently served as a Health Policy Fellow in the Office of then-Sen. Barack Obama and as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow for the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Her work as chair of the Health Policy Committee led to her appointment as a Distinguished Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.