Elizabeth  Walker

In addition to teaching several courses in the BSHES department, I conduct research and evaluation on mental health services and pedagogical approaches. Currently, I am the Director of Graduate Studies for the BSHES MPH program.

My mental health work focuses on evaluating and supporting capacity building for the mental health workforce. As the Evaluator for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration-funded Center for Mental Health Implementation Support (CMHIS), I lead the center's needs assessment and evaluation efforts. CMHIS's goal is to help organizations or health systems improve the delivery of mental health care by supporting them in preparing, implementing, and sustaining effective prevention, treatment, and recovery programs and services.

I also specialize in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), which involves using qualitative and quantitative methodologies to evaluate teaching approaches and strategies. The findings from this work are used to contribute to the literature on effective pedagogical practices and inform the implementation of these practices at RSPH. My SoTL work includes program-level research (e.g. mental health coursework in schools of public health), curriculum-level evaluations of new approaches (e.g., online core courses at RSPH), and course-level evaluations of teaching strategies (e.g. evaluations of Team Based Learning). As the Director of the Office of Evidence-based Learning, I support faculty in using and evaluating a variety of instructional delivery methods.

I am proud to Be BSHES! I completed both my MPH and PhD in BSHES, under the mentorship of Drs. Nancy Thompson and Colleen DiIorio. Prior to joining the BSHES faculty, I was a FIRST (Fellows in Research and Science Teaching) postdoctoral fellow, under the mentorship of Dr. Ben Druss, in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Rollins School of Public Health.