Melissa (Moose) Alperin, EdD, MPH, MCHES is director of the Executive MPH program at the Rollins School of Public Health and runs a training center, funded by HRSA, providing training to the public health workforce in the eight states in the Southeast. In this episode Moose talks about how, while pursuing a liberal arts education, she stumbled into public health by discovering something called community health, then eventually went on to get a master's in public health, specializing in health promotion education. Further, while she initially pursued a PhD program in in instructional technology, she ultimately entered a different program and completed an EdD in higher education management. Moose's words of wisdom include "I think it's so important to like what you do and to more than like what you do. And then I think once you have found what it is that you love to do, that we talked about this earlier, but surrounding yourself with smart people and capable people and a team and being willing to take risks when something isn't working."

Resources

• National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO)
• Home - Society for Public Health Education - SOPHE
• Home - GPHA: Georgia Public Health Association
• American Public Health Association — For science. For action. For health.

Hello listeners, welcome to Educational Landscapes Lessons from Leaders. On today's episode, we're going to learn from Moose Alperin. Welcome to the show, Moose.

Thank you so much. Glad to be here.

Wonderful. To get us going, what is your educational leadership title or titles?

Well, I am the director of the Executive MPH program at Rollins at the Rollins School of Public Health. The acronym that we use for Executive MPH is EMPH program, and the EMPH program is the Distance-Based Master of Public Health for Working Professionals at Rollins. It's origins, just to tell you a little bit about the program, we originally started with some funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC way back in 1997, and we started as a certificate program. CDC funded four different schools of public health to provide half of an MPH degree to CDC employees who were working in state government. And so we were one of those four institutions that had this, what was called the Graduate Certificate at Emory or GCP E-program. A couple of years later, in 1999, we actually began the full degree program and started offering the full MPH degree, and we were at that time known as the Career MPH program or CMPH program. We later changed the name to Executive MPH because nobody understood what a CMPH program was, but people understood executive programs.

Indeed. Indeed. That's amazing, that history. And I was actually going to ask exactly that because I was going to say, "What made it an executive program? Who was it geared towards?" So I'm curious, is it still geared towards primarily CDC employees or it's broader now?

It really is broader. It's really geared towards working professionals, and we like for our students to have a minimum of three years of experience. Typically on average, they have closer to probably eight or nine years of experience.

Wow.

On average, our students are in the range of 35, 36 years old. In some ways, the term executive may be a little bit of a misnomer because they're not necessarily executives, but we felt that that was a term that people understood to mean that this was for working professionals. But we really are much broader than just CDC employees, but we really pull from many different sectors and many different work settings.

That is wonderful. So important. So I am curious, what do you do in this role that you currently have?

Well, to some extent I do it all. I have a lot of help doing it all, but I sort of touched the full life cycle of the students. So from recruitment and admissions through student advisement to graduation, I'm involved with hiring faculty, mentoring faculty. Some of our faculty are full-time Rollins or Emory employees and faculty. Some of our faculty are working professionals as well. We have intentionally staffed our faculty to be both academics as well as practitioners. I'm also involved in curricular issues and financial issues, and as I said, I am not doing this alone. I have a great team that helps. So these days, a lot of the curricular work is done by my deputy director who also is very involved with our faculty. We have a student advisor who's just instrumental in recruitment and admission, student advisement, all things related to students she's very involved with. We have a couple of instructional designers that work with faculty as well. But I often have a finger in all of the different aspects of the program and running the program.

That is great. How big is your team, would you say, of individuals?

We have a full-time advisor. I'll do it in terms of people, not FTEs. But we have deputy director, I have a full-time student advisor. In addition, we have two tracks or two concentrations. So I have a faculty lead for each of those tracks. One of the things that public health students do is they do something called an APE or an Applied Practice Experience. It's an internship, essentially. And so we have a part-time individual who works with students on their APE projects and then all public health students also have a culminating experience. So our students, depending on their track, either write a thesis or they take some capstone courses. So we have a thesis advisor for students who are writing a thesis. I didn't count all those people up, but it's a lot of part-time folks and then two instructional designers, which I mentioned, but are really important as well.

Absolutely. And what I love about that is I think even when you said Executive MPH, I wasn't thinking about the fact that even under an Executive MPH, they would have the option to do a thesis. Because you hear about those types of programs and usually it's very like capstone project based. So I love that there's the two tracks.

No, absolutely. And in older days, all of our students wrote a thesis or what we called an SSP, Special Studies Project, but it was a document that typically had; looked like five chapters. It kind of looked like a thesis, but the SSPs, those Special Study Projects were often more project-based. So students either did the thesis or that more project-based kind of activity. And these days, we have one of our majors is applied epidemiology. All of those students do a thesis. They're much more quantitatively based. And then our students in what's known as the Prevention Science track can pick whether they want to do a thesis. Oftentimes it's project-based, not always, but oftentimes, or they can take capstone courses.

Okay, great. Thank you. So recognizing, as you said, you are involved in the full life cycle, tapping into the different areas as the students are going through, what skills do you use in order to be able to do that?

Well, I think there are the obvious skills is managing a team. We are talking about education, so understanding good pedagogy, particularly in the online environment. So I've got some instructional design background in my sort of bag of tricks, understanding evaluation and assessment. I think financial skills is something I probably didn't necessarily have but developed on the job. I think being a good problem solver, whenever you work with students, there are always scenarios and things that come up that maybe they didn't expect, we didn't expect. And so helping to do some problem solving, but there's also just good solid people skills working with students and working with faculty. And one of the things I like to think about myself is that I'm a connector and I love the interactions that I have with students, especially outside of the classroom, but students who come and they're talking about why they're getting the degree and if they want to shift their career and helping them think about the connections that they should be making.

I think another area is the ability to be creative and ability to be innovative. I talked for example about before students for their culminating experience, everybody did a thesis or they did what we call that SSP, and now it's changed some. But thinking about where there have been bumps in the road for students and where they have had challenges in finishing the program and then thinking creatively about, "How do we address some of those issues?" Finishing the thesis was one of those bumps in the road for students in one of those challenges. So a couple of years ago, we took a look at the program and realized that we needed, first of all, to rethink that culminating experience, and that's when we came up with some students would have the option of doing a capstone or two capstone courses. So it's important, I think, to not be sort of set in your ways, but to be creative, to be innovative.

I think another example that I could give for that is the students that started our program this past fall. in fall of 2023 are fully online. The rest of our program is actually a hybrid program, and our other students are in a hybrid version of the program, but these students are fully online. And so we had to start thinking creatively about new programming, and we wanted to have an optional opportunity for students to come to campus and to be able to see the Emory campus because they don't all live in Atlanta. And so what we did is we created an in-person residency. We just had the inaugural residency this past week, so it was a week long. The theme was Racism as a Public Health Issue. We had a case study competition that covered the week. We also had opportunities to really take advantage of Atlanta being a place where you can really think about the intersection of public health and civil rights and social justice.

And so in addition to this case study, we had the students had opportunities to go to the CDC Museum. We went and partnered with the National Park Service, the King's Center on Ebenezer Baptist Church. And so we went and had a tour of the King's Center and then went and had a discussion at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. We visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. So it was just a wonderful, wonderful week. And then we had the culminating experience where students presented their solutions to the case study this past Friday. It was a great opportunity to really think about new programming that would bring students to the campus to have them interact, not only... And I should probably say participants, not students, because we had both students and alums who participated. So I know I've deviated a little bit from some of the skills, but thought that that was an example of sort of thinking outside the box.

Yes, and I think that's a really important skill because as you were talking, that connector, and as I'm listening to you, the responsiveness of what are folks needing, where are we? How do we take all of that into account? And I think those are really important skills that sometimes people take for granted in education because they're like, "Oh, we just do things this way." And yet you have to be responsive to what's happening around you. So I love that.

No, absolutely. And you have to, as you said, be willing to not always just do it because that's the way it's been done, but think about what the needs are and be willing to make the changes when changes need to be made or add new things because that's what's needed.

Yeah, absolutely. I recognize you probably didn't just start off in this leadership role, so I am curious, what was your journey that led to this current role?

Well, early on in my public health career, and I will say that I sort of fell into public health, but early on in my career, I had a wonderful mentor, Dr. Kathy Miner. She is the person that wrote that original grant that got that certificate program funded. And in many ways, I was involved with many of the activities that she was involved with. I didn't necessarily have a leadership role in the certificate program. I taught in it. I worked as an instructional designer in it, but probably more importantly, I was just involved with a lot of the things that Kathy did. And so I've been around what is now the EMPH program since its very beginnings. And then Kathy was one of these that always encouraged me to, "Go back to school, go back to school." Because at that point, I had my master's degree in public health, but I didn't have a doctoral degree.

So about, I think it was probably 30 years ago, I started a PhD program in instructional technology, but it really wasn't instructional technology. It really was instructional design. I got through my comps at the same time I was helping Kathy run a training center that was federally funded and I never finished the degree. So fast forward many years, and throughout these years, Kathy was still pushing at me, "You got to finish, you got to finish, you got to finish." I then entered a different program and I completed an EdD, so a degree in education and specifically in higher education management. But I've always been involved with the public health workforce. At one end of the spectrum, I have run or helped run different training centers, providing continuing professional education to the public health workforce. And then at the other end of the spectrum, I like to think of... EMPH is being there and my being involved with graduate education.

So, how I landed into being the director of the program, it wasn't something that I was a little girl and said one day I want to grow up [and conduct] an online program. That wasn't at all in my thinking. In some ways, I think it landed in my lap. I had been around the program. There was a time in which the current director was leaving. I had been involved, I was interested, and I think I sort of woke up one morning and all of a sudden I was the director of the program. And here we are today many years later.

Yep. Yep. Now I'm going to go. You said a very interesting thing right at the beginning there, you stumbled into public health. I want to hear more about how that happened.

Well, I, in college was actually a Judaic studies major, and I came from a family that really valued a liberal arts education. And so I remember somebody once asking me, "Well, did you want to be a rabbi?" And, no, I didn't want to be a rabbi, but I wanted to do something where I learned to communicate and think, and I liked the classes and the Judaic studies major. And so that's what I did. What also happened though was my senior year in college, I discovered something called community health. And so while all of my friends were taking three classes because we were seniors and we were almost graduating, I was taking five and six classes because I had discovered this thing called community health, and I loved the courses. And then I graduated and I tinkered with, "Did I want to go to medical school?" And I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated.

And so I came back to Atlanta. I was living at my mom and dad's house, and I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I was looking through the Emory course catalog and I discovered this course called epidemiology, and it sounded really interesting. I like reading mysteries. It sounded like the real life version of the books that I like to read. And so I took the Epidemiology class and then I took a Biostats class, and then I took a History of Public Health class. And somewhere along the way I thought, "This is really kind of fun. Maybe I'll apply to get a degree in this thing." And so I applied after taking several classes in what was known as being a student in special standing and I was accepted. And then at some point I sort of looked back on my undergraduate career and said, "You know what? You actually discovered public health when you discovered community health." So that's my sort of story and how I got into public health.

Oh my God, that is amazing. And it resonates with me a lot because I went through my undergrad not really knowing where I was heading, what was I going to do? All I knew is I wanted to work with people, which is a broad thing.

You could do a lot if that's what you want to do.

Exactly. Which made it very difficult to go, "Okay, this is what I'm going to do." And so, I always really appreciate hearing these kind of journeys. Then I'm like, "Oh, I wasn't alone." Even the whole starting, I started one PhD program, then left it and took a year to be like, "What am I really doing?" And then eventually made it to the path I ended off in. So everything you said really resonated with me. Thank you for sharing.

Well, and it's nice to know I'm not the only one who starts a program and life goes in a different direction.

Exactly. Exactly. So no, thank you so much again. I am very curious, given the work that you do and you were involved in that program from inception once you took on the leadership side, what do you wish you knew before stepping into that type of role?

Well, I think, I don't know if this truly is something I wish I had known beforehand, but I certainly think one of the things that's important to have is it's really important to have a team around you and to have really good people around you. And that's been invaluable. You can't do this work alone and you can't do it in a silo. So I think that maybe is one of the things that I think is important to know when you step into this kind of role.

Yes, very important. You are not a one person mission. Yeah.

No. And if you think you can do it alone, I think you need to sort of go back and rethink things.

Indeed, indeed. Thank you. So recognizing, and I love the stuff that interests you. What continuing professional development do you do to keep up with the needs of your roles, public health, all that good stuff?

So the honest answer is I don't do nearly enough. I think I am one of those people, like many academics are that wish there were not 24 hours in a day, but wish there were 34 hours in a day. But I wish I read more. I wish I... There were some conferences that I do attend that I go to every year. They're public-health-focused or health-education-focused. I consider myself a health educator and my master's in public health is in health promotion education. What I wish I did more of was probably in the education space and in the online space. I see emails that come through and think, "Gosh, I really wish I had the time or took the time really to go to some of the things that are more educationally-focused and in the online space." But there are conferences I go to every year that had that public health and health education focus that I'm always there. Those are important to me to go and to sort of see what's happening in these spaces.

Can you share some examples of what those conference names are in case people are interested?

Absolutely. The American Public Health Association is the big public health organization in this country. In addition, it has different state affiliates. So I'm also go to the Georgia Public Health Association, which is the state affiliate of the American Public Health Association, SOPHE or the Society of Public Health Educators is a conference as well that I go to. I've also started going, and this is really related more to the training center that I currently run, so something different than EMPH, but I run a training center that is funded by HRSA, which is one of the federal agencies, and we provide training to the public health workforce in the eight states in the Southeast. And so we are one of 10 training centers. Gosh, I guess that's another educational title-

I know that I should have talked about at the beginning. But the training centers have started going to some conferences to talk about the work that we do. So NACCHO or the National Association of City and County Health Officials is another conference that I've started going to.

That's wonderful.

That's a few of them.

And now of course I am going to ask you to tell us more about this training center.

So the Region for Public Health Training Center is funded by HRSA, the Health Resources and Services Administration, which, as I mentioned, is one of the federal agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. The program has been around in some forms since 1999. Emory has not been involved that entire length, but back in 2010 to 2014, we were the Emory Public Health Training Center, and then HRSA decided to actually turn the program into a regional model. So at the time it turned it into a regional model. There were 37 training centers in the country, but all of the states of territories were not covered.

When they turned it into a regional model, they funded 10 training centers, one in each of the health and human services regions, which meant that all of the states, all of the territories are covered. And the training centers really have three major functions. We provide professional development for the public health workforce and specifically the governmental public health workforce in the states or territories in our region. We provide experiential learning opportunities or internships for our future public health workforce, so our public students, and then we also provide technical assistance and consultation for health departments and other community-based organizations.

That is amazing and very important. So I'm glad that we stumbled into you covering that over here.

Absolutely. I was coming into this conversation thinking EMPH, but you're absolutely right. I have that role at both ends of the spectrum, continuing professional education as well as the academic graduate education.

And I love that because I think sometimes people only think about the academic side and yet there's continuing professional development that people want to do as they're doing their jobs. So it is important to be able to touch both ends.

Well, in public health it's critical. There are studies and surveys out there that indicate that I believe it's only about 14% of the public health workforce has formal training in public health. And so there is an enormous need for continuing professional education at the same time where you have a whole bunch of people that don't have formal education and public health. You also have people who are leaving public health. They're either retiring or they're leaving public health for some reason other than retirement. And so you have all these people that are coming into public health, and I think Colbert only exacerbated that because of all the need for contact tracing. You had all these people that came into public health that weren't from a public health environment at all. And so there's enormous need for that continuing professional education.

Indeed, indeed. Thank you. So now I'm curious, and I want you to think about that full spectrum of education that you're involved in. What advice would you give someone interested in doing the same type of leadership roles that you have?

I think first and foremost is love what you do. And if you don't love what you do, go find something that you love. I have a niece and nephew who one is about to graduate from college. One is about a year out from graduate school and just sort of watching them discover the world and discover what they want to be doing or looking for what they want to be doing. And so that first, I mean, that's not looking for leadership roles at this point in their careers, but I think it's so important to like what you do and to more than like what you do. And then I think once you have found what it is that you love to do, that we talked about this earlier, but surrounding yourself with smart people and capable people and a team and being willing to take risks when something isn't working.

The easy path is sometimes, "Well, I'll just keep doing what we've always been doing." But ultimately that's not the right to do. And being strong enough and brave enough to make a change when changes need to be made. So I mentioned earlier in our conversation about sort of looking at where students, at least in the Executive MPH program, we're stumbling and finishing the thesis with something. And so we went and made some changes about what the culminating experience was and we added support for the students to help them through that thesis process. Well, another thing we did around that same time is we changed the structure of our program rather than having students go through a program that was seven semesters. We changed it to be a six semester program for the student who went through in a full-time fashion. We changed. We didn't have courses that were all two credits.

Some classes we discovered, well, we were three credit classes and those feel like easy, inconsequential kinds of changes, but they're enormous changes. We changed the financial model of the program rather than paying per credit hour. If a student took a certain number of courses or a certain number of credits, excuse me, in a semester, it was a flat fee, but if they took less than that, it was still the per-credit. And all of those things were huge changes and they came with sort of trickle effects that we had to deal with, but it was the right thing to do. And so it was important to take the risks, to think about the consequences the best we could, but to also expect the unexpected and then deal with it when it came up. But first and foremost, you got to love what you do.

So important, so important. And now, you've done so many amazing things. So I am now curious how you're even going to pick this answer, but what has been one of your greatest successes thus far?

Well, this may not surprise you, but I think my successes are really other people's successes. I really like seeing other people shine. I am capable of being the person in the front, but I also love being the person in the back and really bolstering and holding other people up. So I know that when I talk to faculty who teach in both the online programs, our program and also teach in person, they often say they're better instructors in the in-person classes because of their experience with the EMPH program. I love hearing that. That's awesome. Or when students talk about what the program has meant to them or students talk about how they have used the material that they're learning. To me, adult learners are fun to work with and that's who we have. We talk about the executive EMPH program, but that's who we have in the executive EMPH program.

Quite honestly, that's who we have with the training center too. They're all adult learners, but having somebody come to you, I have a longer time with people in the Executive MPH program, but having a full semester class and at some point having a student come and say, "Oh, I get it now. Now I'm using this material in my job." That's lovely to see. That's great to see you feel some validation that you are helping individuals develop a skill set that they are really using. And even thinking about alums who come back, I'm thinking about a student who sent me an email a couple of years ago talking about how the Executive MPH program had changed her life both professionally and personally. She talked about that it had given her the knowledge and confidence and skills to really pursue her passion. At that point in time, she had just gotten her first NIH grant and she had recently gone and had lunch with some of her friends from the program.

So she sent me a photograph of them at lunch and just sort of seeing that longer term effect is really wonderful and to see how the program has really built the confidence in people, built the skills in people, and it happens in the same kind of way with the training center as well. We just don't have oftentimes as long an experience to interact with people. Although the training center does have an eight month leadership institute, and so that's an experience where we get to see people develop over a longer timeframe and over that longer kind of time period, and then hopefully, keep in touch with them as well. Because we have an alumni group of individuals who've gone through the leadership program, so we do get to mimic some of that longevity in that particular program.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. I recognize you are also an adult learner, so I am curious, what would you say your biggest growth opportunities are right now?

Oh, there's so many technologies out there. I'd love to take a week off or a month off and just sort of go and explore the technologies that are there and to think about how they could be used in classes that I teach, whether it's a continuing professional ed or whether it's what I do with EMPH. I also am excited to see how other people do online education. I know how we do EMPH. I know what we do with the training center, which is mostly online, not fully online but mostly.

One of the things that Rollins is about to embark on is a new initiative of increasing the online courses that we were offering at the school. And I'm seeing this from the sidelines, so to speak, but we've recently selected a vendor that we're going to work with and I'm really kind of secretly hoping that I may have an opportunity to work with this group at some point because I'd love to see, and this is on the teaching side, not necessarily the leadership side, but I'd love to see how somebody else does this. I know how we do it, but I want to see how somebody else does it.

Yeah, it made me think about, as you said that have you ever... I know we are busy human beings, but the Online Learning Consortium, have you ever attended any of their things?

I don't think I have, but there's so many opportunities to see. That goes back to your question about my own professional education and being honest and telling you I don't have enough time of the day and there's more stuff I'd like to be doing.

I hear that.

And that would certainly fall into that category as you are suggesting to see how other people do this kind of work.

Right. I brought it up because I ended off doing, I think one of their conferences, they run two a year. I still don't know the difference between them, but they do run two, and I ended up doing one of their conferences because of the pandemic, making us switch the teaching fellowship into an online one. And I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing." So before we get learners, let me learn some stuff. And so that was the driver. But I'm with you, I keep getting their emails and I'm like, "One day I'll get back to you." But yes, that's what came to my mind when you talked about-

And I'd like to think that good education is good education. I mean, you need solid learning objectives. You need teaching strategies that teach to the learning objectives and assessment strategies that assess whether the learner has achieved those objectives and the modality may change, but-

The core.

... those basic core things you need regardless of the environment. But seeing those different modalities is something I'd like more exposure to and probably just need to intentionally make the time to be able to do that.

The time we need in our 34-hour weeks.

Exactly.

Thank you. As you reflect on the work that you've done, what do you love most about your work and what you do?

I think I probably said some of this earlier in our conversation, but I like working with smart and talented people. I like seeing the light bulbs go off in our learners, whether it's those that are taking a short three-hour, four-hour class or those that are engaged in a longer activity, whether it's an eight-month leadership institute or whether it's a semester-long course to see people start to connect what they're learning with their real lives is really satisfying to me. And the times when you get frustrated about what you're doing and you're like, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to get all this done?" It's thinking about some of those times where know you've made a difference and somebody's been able to take what you are teaching them or what they're learning in a program because if I put my director hat on, it may not be me specifically teaching. It could be somebody else teaching. But to have those light-bulb moments and while I'm waiting for those light-bulb moments be working with smart, talented people is really what I enjoy.

Thank you. I recognize I've spent a lot of time asking you about things to do with work and career, but you are more than what you do. So, my last core question is what are some things you do outside of work to help you maintain joy in life and practice?

Well, I like reading. In particular, I like mysteries and I also love photography.

Oh.

I grew up as a kid. I have two older brothers. We all did photography. Our folks created a black and white dark room at our house. So I grew up in the day when cameras weren't all automated. So I understood the relationship between F-stop and aperture and shutter speed, and I've forgotten it all now because cameras are all automatic now. But I love taking pictures, and so I am often the person that is behind the lens taking photographs and just think that's really fun. This past fall, I went to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque and came back with thousands upon thousands of photographs of balloons and balloons in the sky. So looking for those opportunities to go and be my amateur photographer is something that I really enjoy.

Oh, so now you've got me curious because I've always wanted to go to that festival. Would you say it's one that's worthwhile to go to?

It's the only one I've ever been to, and it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. But you wake up at three o'clock in the morning because when you go to the times to see the balloons are really 6:00 AM to about 9:00 AM then nothing happens during the bulk of the day, and then it's back to six, seven o'clock at night till maybe eight or nine o'clock at night. So I've found myself tired, but exhilarated all at the same time.

Indeed. And I appreciate knowing that part because I'm not a morning person, so that is something for me to mentally prepare for.

But sometimes it's worth it.

Yes. Indeed, indeed. Because that is-

Seeing 500 balloons in the sky all at the same time, amazing.

Exactly. That is on my bucket list, so thank you for sharing that. Those were my core questions for you, but before I let you go, any last words of wisdom for aspiring educators or education leaders?

I don't think so. But this has been a fun conversation and I've enjoyed thinking about the different aspects of my leadership and appreciate your reminding me of aspects I hadn't thought of as I was coming into this, but are very real.

Indeed they are and very important to the people that you work with. And so we appreciate you taking time for sharing.

Thank you.