Balancing Faculty Autonomy With Collaboration, Course Updates, and Consistency in Core Courses: Recommendations for Teaching Teams and Administrators of Schools and Programs of Public Health

Master of Public Health (MPH) “core courses” are essential preparation for advanced study and professional practice. As a multidisciplinary, core course teaching team, we aim to balance collaboration, the need to update content, and consistency across sections with faculty autonomy, while also attending to time constraints and Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) accreditation requirements. In this paper, we describe and discuss advantages and disadvantages of the four strategies we used to illuminate how we spend class time, prioritize content, and balance institutional consistency with instructor individuality. The strategies are: create common course materials; hold regular instructional team meetings; capture teacher impressions after each weekly class; and conduct individual syllabus and semester review interviews with the teaching team. Analysis led to seven recommendations for both teaching teams and administrators of schools and programs of public health that have the potential to improve the teaching of core subjects. Core courses present instructors with opportunities to feature our specific departments and potentially inspire students to work in our specialty areas. These findings are relevant to colleagues who are striving to respect the autonomy to which many in academia are accustomed and help ensure students enjoy consistent, high-quality experiences in team-taught courses.