A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

Lately, I find myself bragging about the students, faculty, and staff in the College of Human Services and Health Professions.

It seems appropriate and well deserved. As dean of the college, I believe that we have a lot to be proud of. Looking back over the five years that has passed since the college’s founding, I see us growing and expanding, changing with the times, embracing new challenges and creating a visionary future with a solid foundation.

The examples are endless. For starters, we are the fastest-growing college at Syracuse University, and now offer the University’s two newest bachelor’s degrees—sport management and health and wellness. Both programs allow us to provide our students with an expanded range of professional preparation, as we get involved in two very dynamic, fast growing, and pervasive segments of our culture.

We will engage the concepts of wellness and leisure over the lifetime. We will examine health disparities throughout the population. We will offer our students a curriculum in mental health policy and disability law. We will support varsity athletes majoring in child and family studies and focusing on early childhood education while receiving teacher training at our Bernice M. Wright Child Development Laboratory School. We will support nutrition students as they offer nutrition counseling to the campus community.

All of our students will also engage in experiential learning in the field, working with those populations that are directly affected by the theories, policies, and law we teach in the classroom. Students will experience first hand the constant dilemma of the professional and the endless need for more responsive programs for each of these populations.

But we’re not stopping there. This year, plans have been launched for the establishment of several new joint degrees, including:

A dual bachelor’s degree in sport management and marketing, with SU’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management

A dual bachelor’s degree in sport management and nutrition and hospitality management

A dual bachelor’s degree in health and wellness and nutrition and hospitality management

A dual bachelor’s degree in child and family studies and policy studies, with SU’s College of Arts and Sciences

A dual degree in child and family studies and education, with SU’s School of Education, which would lead to a master’s degree and teaching certification in regular and inclusive education

A master of public health degree, with the SUNY Upstate Medical University

A dual graduate degree in child and family studies and social wo

A joint degree in social work and disability studies, with SU’s School of Education, which would lead to an M.S.W. with a certificate of advanced studies in disabilities studies

A joint degree in social work and law, which would lead to an M.S.W. and a J.D.

Meanwhile, our enrollment is growing at a faster rate than any other college at Syracuse. The student interest in sport management has been outrageous, and nutrition and hospitality management has grown by more than 180 majors. Currently, a self-study in the department is allowing us to explore new directions, especially cross-disciplinary collaboration with health and wellness and sport management.

We have also established a college-wide research center, which articulates our vision for interdisciplinary research and incubates entrepreneurial enterprises, and which already offers $16,000 in seed money to fund the writing of external grants.

As we launch these new initiatives, we are mindful that we have much more to do. We are in a high-energy posture, and the vibrancy among our students and faculty is contagious. 

Through it all, we continue to serve as the articulation of the Syracuse University vision for community engagement through our teaching, research, and practice. We exemplify scholarship in action and engage our students in important theoretical dialogues of critical race theory, gender studies, sexual orientation, the differently abled, the aged, and issues of social responsibility. We lead the students through a critical analysis of who is included and who is marginalized, and how to critique, while also building new solutions.

We educate students to become professionals who provide the services that enhance the emotional and physical well being of individuals, families, groups and communities.

Diane Lyden Murphy