Vol. 38, No. 18

1-24-2008
By: Jeff McCallister

Preparing for the threat: Program touts significant achievements

His job description remains the same as it was a year ago, but the work Eric Lutz does has evolved significantly.

As program manager for the PHPID — Public Health Preparedness for Infectious Diseases — one of the 10 Targeted Investment in Excellence programs at Ohio State, Lutz had only the beginning steps of the program to tout in the first-year annual report that went to the Office of Academic Affairs last June.

Granted, the steps were significant. The Steering Committee of the PHPID had laid the foundation for this massive undertaking, which involves collaboration among six colleges, and as the program was in its infancy, simply organizing committees and putting together the mission, goals and processes were notable in and of themselves.

And the work was well-received in the Office of Academic Affairs. The President’s and Provost’s Advisory Committee, in its review of the annual report and the first year of the TIE, wrote, “The progress of the first year was excellent and sets the path for achieving future success … Significant uplift is expected for the coming year.”

“The OAA seems happy with the direction of the program, basically telling us to keep it up,” Lutz said. “But this isn’t about getting kudos. We hear them saying the PHPID is doing a great job, and we certainly couldn’t be doing this without their support, but what we’re thinking is, ‘What can we do to further improve our efforts? What can we do to keep up the momentum?’”

So now as Lutz compiles information that will become the second-year annual report, the program’s achievements are both more numerous and more concrete.

“We started an aggressive initial membership drive between June and August, resulting in more than 100 members with wide representation across all six colleges,” Lutz said.

Membership in the PHPID gives faculty an easier way to collaborate, to leverage expertise and experience from across the six colleges, increasing opportunities for more external funding and advancing current research at a faster pace, Lutz said.

The PHPID program put out an electronic membership directory on its new Web site (phpid.osu.edu), which lists all the members, with their areas of expertise, to facilitate that collaboration.

Another benefit of the membership is the opportunity to serve on subcommittees that decide where some of the program’s funding actually goes.

Those committees decided the recipients of the program’s first two graduate fellowships. From 12 proposals received from students from five of the six colleges, Erin Rottinghaus and Robert Crawford, both from the College of Medicine, earned the first awards, which provide tuition and a stipend for PHPID-related research.

In addition, the committees developed, initiated, closed and awarded funds to five pilot research programs — three at the full $50,000 funding level and another two half-awards, to faculty-led research projects that also cross over the college lines.

One of the grant awardees, Armando Hoet, also was the first faculty hire of the PHPID, accepting the cross-college Veterinary Public Health Assistant Professorship in the colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Public Health.

“By far the largest use of our funds is for 12 faculty hires, with six cross-college recruitments currently active across five colleges.” Lutz said. “As such, a PHPID representative is involved with each of the college recruitments for these positions. It can be a little complicated to work out some of the details of cross-college hires but it embodies the spirit of the collaborative spreading across this university.”

So with all those awards made and hires beginning to come on board, Lutz said he expects the TIE to now realize some of its vast potential in the coming year.

“I think the steering committee has done an excellent job establishing the infrastructure and establishing the foundational governance of the program,” he said. “To bolster that leadership, we are honored that Dr. Tom Rosol, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, has agreed to serve as the lead dean for the PHPID. What’s more, now that we will begin seeing our graduate fellows working on their research and teams of cross-college faculty working on their pilot grant projects, novel infectious disease-related science will really get rolling.

“Once people see that there is actual money being awarded and the novel research is happening, I think it will spur even more interest in the PHPID programs,” he said. “It’s exciting to see our momentum build.”

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