Cooper Named New UT School of Public Health's
New Regional Dean for San Antonio
HOUSTON – (June 22, 2007)–Sharon Cooper, Ph.D., has been appointed dean of The University of Texas School of Public Health’s San Antonio Regional Campus, effective July 1.
Sharon Cooper, Ph.D.
Cooper is returning to the UT School of Public Health after serving as a faculty member from 1985 to 2002, and as assistant dean for academic affairs from 1999 to 2001. She most recently was professor and head of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Texas A&M University Rural School of Public Health.
Announcing her appointment, UT School of Public Health Dean Guy S. Parcel, Ph.D., said, “Dr. Cooper was not only a student here, but she also was a faculty member here for 12 years – and, during her tenure at Texas A&M, she continued collaborating with the faculty here, maintaining her orange and white connections.”
Cooper is a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, and she has been a consultant for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and a reviewer for a several professional journals. Her grant-funded research interest is the health and safety of adolescent migrant farmworkers and the relationships between environment and cancer.
She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1973, a master’s degree in quantitative psychology from the University of Oklahoma in 1975, a second master’s degree in biostatistics and epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1976, and a doctorate in epidemiology from the UT School of Public Health in 1982.
“I'll look forward to working with other partners in San Antonio – for example, the community, the Health Department, UT San Antonio, and the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio,” Cooper said.
She succeeds two faculty members who had served separate stints as interim regional dean for the campus since January 2004.
Located near the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the UT School of Public Health’s San Antonio Regional Campus offers graduate-level courses leading to the Master of Public Health degree. A new M.D./M.P.H. dual degree program now provides public health education to medical students in San Antonio.
The main campus of the UT School of Public Health is located in Houston in the world-famous Texas Medical Center. In response to the need for graduate public health education in other areas of the state, the school established regional campuses offering the M.P.H. degree in San Antonio (1979), El Paso (1992), Dallas (1998), and Brownsville (2000), with an Austin regional campus now underway.