Goal 2: Transformational Learning
Developing leaders, engaged scholars and change-makers in public health
The School of Public Health prepares learners and public health professionals to respond to complex and evolving population health challenges with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed for leadership, practice, research and societal impact.
Through this goal, SPH is strengthening public health education across the learning continuum by renewing programs, expanding flexible pathways, deepening experiential learning and developing educational offerings aligned with emerging public health and health system needs.
Progress Updates
Year 1 (2025-26) Highlights
In 2025-26, SPH advanced significant work across its education portfolio. Progress focused on renewing academic programs, expanding flexible learning pathways, strengthening experiential learning and developing new programming aligned with emerging public health and health system needs.
These efforts helped position SPH to prepare learners and public health professionals to lead in complex systems, work across sectors and respond to evolving population health challenges.
Health System Leadership programming advanced
SPH is working toward advancing a new graduate-level, course-based program in Health System Leadership. The initiative has been included within SPH’s approved institutional mandate and will be developed in partnership with the Alberta School of Business, bringing together expertise in public health, management, leadership and organizational design.
The programming will be delivered through stackable graduate certificates, with a focus on leadership, systems thinking and cross-sector collaboration to strengthen health systems and improve population-level outcomes.
Flexible learning pathways expanded
SPH advanced work on graduate certificates, micro-credentials and laddering pathways that support more flexible access to public health education and help learners build credentials over time. Early progress included work on graduate certificates in areas such as Population Health (online) and Climate Change and Health, as well as modular offerings designed to support learners at different career stages. This included the Coursera course Fighting Misinformation in Public Health, which provides an accessible learning opportunity focused on a timely and emerging public health challenge.
Experiential learning strengthened
SPH continued to expand experiential learning by creating opportunities for learners to connect with public health professionals, practice-based mentors and partner organizations. This included continued work with public health partners and adjunct faculty around engagement opportunities and learner-facing events, such as the Celebration of Experiential Learning and SPHSA networking events.
Education portfolio renewal advanced
SPH continued reviewing and renewing its education portfolio to support program relevance, sustainability, quality and learner success. This work included restructuring the Office of Education to better reflect significant program growth over the past five to seven years. The evolving structure includes directors across SPH programs, as well as an experiential learning director and a curricular support and management director to strengthen the quality of undergraduate programming and the core curriculum in the MPH, MSc and PhD programs.
Undergraduate public health pathways advanced
SPH contributed to the development of the bachelor of health sciences program and explored pathways to strengthen undergraduate exposure to population and public health. Over 4,100 undergraduate students completed an SPH undergrad course over the last year. This included work related to the proposed Population and Public Health concentration, the launch of the first cohort in the Planetary Health Undergraduate Embedded Certificate, and future opportunities to connect undergraduate learning with graduate-level public health education.
International education partnership advanced
SPH continued to strengthen its educational partnership with Wenzhou Medical University through ongoing discussions related to MPH programming. As part of this growing relationship, Dr. Yujuan Shan, professor, PhD supervisor, and MPH program coordinator at Wenzhou Medical University, visited Edmonton to discuss the school’s ongoing relationship with the University of Alberta and SPH.