End of an era
Dean Michael G. Perri retires after leading the college through crisis, opportunity and significant growth
By Jill Pease
Michael G. Perri, Ph.D., steps down as dean this summer and will retire at the end of the year after leading the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions for 15 years. With Perri at the helm, what was once one of the smallest colleges on the University of Florida campus has grown enormously in people and programs and is recognized nationally for its educational and research contributions.
Under Perri’s leadership, the college has expanded its academic portfolio to 20 degree programs, up from 12. Student enrollment has increased more than 70%, and the number of degrees awarded annually has grown from 450 to more than 700 per year.
Perri has overseen the recruitment of more than 85 new faculty positions in support of university hiring initiatives, such as the recent artificial intelligence initiative. Since 2007, the college’s extramural research awards have increased more than threefold and the college is now ranked ninth in National Institutes of Health research funding among schools of public health at public universities.
“Dean Perri has laid a very strong foundation for the next dean to lead us into an even brighter future,” said Stephanie Hanson, Ph.D., executive associate dean and a member of the college’s administration since 1996. “Our college is on the cusp of something great. We are already doing a lot of great work in education, research and service, but I think he’s positioned the college extremely well to make even more significant contributions locally, nationally and globally to improve the health and well-being of others.”
Perri chats with attendees at an ice cream social held for doctoral students at the start of the 2018 academic year.
Finding an academic home at UF
Perri joined the UF College of Health Related Professions — as it was then known — from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1990 as head of the health psychology division in the department of clinical and health psychology. He was attracted to the department’s outstanding reputation and its unique placement within an academic health center.
In those days, the department was much smaller, with around 12 core faculty members organized into three focus areas: health psychology, child psychology and neuropsychology. Faculty became tight-knit with frequent dinners and family events at each other’s homes and weekly poker nights.
“There was a lot of collegiality, particularly within the areas, and that made it fun to come to work,” Perri said. “Even though we worked hard and had a lot on our plates, it was exciting, and we were doing a lot of things that our colleagues across the country couldn’t do, in part because we were situated in the health science center.”
In his research, Perri has focused on health promotion and disease prevention through changes in diet and physical activity. An innovative partnership with UF/IFAS Extension, which operates county extension offices throughout the state, led to focusing his research on obesity and behavioral weight management programs targeting rural areas.
Over the course of his career, Perri has contributed to more than 200 publications and has been the principal investigator or co-investigator for more than $65 million in research grants and contracts. In recognition of his scholarship, he has been elected a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Obesity Society.
“One thing about Mike that I don’t think is as appreciated as it should be is he’s been a funded researcher throughout his deanship,” said Robert G. Frank, Ph.D., the dean of the College of Public Health and Health Professions from 1995 to 2007 who went on to serve as provost at Kent State University and president of the University of New Mexico. “It is really extremely rare that a dean maintains his funding base and runs a program where he’s graduating Ph.D. students and is fully participating in academic life. There are very few triple hitters left at universities anymore who are working in all three of our basic missions. Mike is the classic star of a university system, but without the ego.”
Perri joined the college in 1990 as a faculty member in the department of clinical and health psychology.
Developing research talent
In 2004, Perri accepted the role of associate dean for research for the college, which just the year before had changed its name to the College of Public Health and Health Professions and started developing the programs and hiring the faculty necessary for a full-fledged school of public health.
One of Perri’s focus areas was to help nurture careers of junior faculty as part of the college’s overall goal of substantially increasing research funding. They were offered resources and support through grant workshops and mentoring from senior faculty. Within two years, two-thirds of the 30 or so participating assistant professors had successfully competed for research funding.
“It became a cultural identity for the college, an ingrained behavior for everybody and Mike’s vision, steadiness and planning were all really critical components to making that happen,” Frank said.
When Frank left for Kent State in 2007, Perri was one of a few clear candidates for the position of interim dean. As interim dean, however, Perri would not be able to simply maintain the status quo until a permanent dean was hired. Within a few days on the job, he and the college were confronted with a series of challenges that threatened PHHP’s ability to add the programs and faculty necessary to achieve accreditation as a school of public health. Its existence as an independent college at the University of Florida was also in jeopardy.
Leading during a crisis
The first hit came in the summer of 2007 as Florida experienced the leading edge of the Great Recession. Not far behind were renewed calls from some UF administrators to merge PHHP under another small college on campus and abandon the plan to develop a UF school of public health.
The college was already starting the fiscal year with a $1.3 million deficit because of a loss in reimbursement for some of its tuition dollars. On top of that, large recession-era budget cuts loomed and some faculty questioned whether it was the right time for PHHP to expand.
“That was a really, really challenging time,” Perri said. “We had already started to do the buildout to become accredited as a school of public health, but there were a number of very important steps that had to take place. To get to that point, we needed to add 30 new faculty in public health, and we were just over halfway there. We also needed to get approval for new Ph.D. programs in epidemiology and biostatistics.”
Despite all the obstacles, Perri felt the right decision was to move forward with developing a school of public health.
“Even though over the short run that was going to be difficult for us, over the long run it had so many benefits to us, the university and the state,” Perri said.
Mary Peoples-Sheps, Dr.P.H., who joined the college administration in 2004 and retired in 2014 as senior associate dean for public health, credits Perri’s collaborative decision-making approach with his success at consensus building during this period, which also coincided with a university-required closure of one of the college’s degree programs.
“Mike did a wonderful job of working with people,” she said. “In his inimitable way, he was honest and straightforward about where things were and what he was expecting in the future, and it worked. He instituted measures that allowed the college to still continue to thrive, while cutting back on things that were not as important as our key missions. Those were hard decisions to make right off the bat, but he made them and he made them as palatable as humanly possible. And we survived and thrived.”
The college met a key milestone later that year when the university took its proposal for the new doctoral programs in epidemiology and biostatistics to Florida’s Board of Governors, the governing board of the state university system. The proposal was not expected to pass because of the state’s financial issues. UF leadership hoped for a best case scenario of a vote postponement to the following year. After a persuasive speech from then UF president Bernie Machen, the board voted to approve the degree programs.
“That was a big victory,” Perri said. “Having the approval for these Ph.D. programs allowed us to move forward toward seeking accreditation as a school of public health. It also gave us assurance that we were going to be able to maintain our independence as a college and continue to exist.”
In 2009, the college received accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health, a feat that required more than one creative solution to overcome the fact that the college was still growing in its public health enterprise. Perri was appointed dean after a national search, giving him the opportunity to see initiatives he had started as interim dean, including programs to encourage collaboration between public health and health professions faculty and outreach in Haiti, come to fruition.
A heart for Haiti
Perri with children in Gressier, Haiti, following the 2010 earthquake.
Perri was first invited to visit Haiti in 2009 by Edsel Redden, a UF/IFAS Extension agent in Putnam County, who had volunteered in the country for years.
“Edsel said, ‘I’ve got to get you to come down to Haiti and see if you see any public health problems,’” Perri said. “The first trip there was a real eye opener in terms of seeing the extent of the poverty, the economic disadvantages and particularly when you saw the kids. You could see so much that needed to be done in all different kinds of ways.”
Perri sought to develop sustainable programs that differed from the limitations of yearly medical missions where health care providers may diagnose a health issue, but would not be able to ensure a patient received continual care after the group left.
“One of the things we tried to do is create partnerships where we work together with Haitians to develop infrastructure that is going to be as helpful to them as it was to us in terms of great opportunities for training and research for faculty and students,” Perri said.
PHHP’s initial projects, based in Gressier and Leogane, included health education for teachers, parents and children, and health data tracking and basic medical care for children in a local orphanage.
As great as Haiti’s public health needs were in 2009, the following year they were multiplied many times over when a massive earthquake struck. Within days of the disaster, Perri led a team of medical and public health professionals in a relief mission.
The group worked with local leaders to determine short and long-term public health needs, and they recognized that an infectious disease outbreak was a real threat. Indeed, that fall a cholera epidemic broke out that is believed to have been introduced by U.N. peacekeepers from a region where the disease is endemic.
The next year, PHHP, along with non-governmental organizations and support from the private sector, opened the UF Public Health Laboratory in Gressier to allow UF researchers to work with colleagues at the Haiti Ministry of Public Health and Population to quickly identify and contain infectious disease outbreaks.
Haiti’s recent political instability has placed many of the college’s activities in that country on pause.
“While we still have a presence there, a lot is on hold because of the very complicated situation, but it’s instructive for our students and for ourselves to be humble about what we can do and recognize the limitations we have,” Perri said.
Perri welcomes Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, at the opening ceremony of the UF Public Health Laboratory in Haiti in 2011.
Man of integrity
As his colleagues reflect on his deanship, distinct themes emerge. Perri listens carefully, shares credit and demonstrates clear vision. He has made the most of new opportunities to grow and strengthen the college, and he unfailingly leads with the college and its people in mind.
“I have found him to be a very collaborative leader, but also someone who is able to make the difficult decisions. And he has always tried to do the right thing,” Hanson said. “I really see him as the quintessential man of integrity. I feel that whatever I brought to him, he would be very thoughtful and would weigh all of the different components and make sound decisions. I have complete trust in his leadership because his decision-making always focuses squarely on what is best for the college.”
Hanson also praised Perri as an inventive thinker who anticipates potential issues on the horizon and formulates creative solutions. As a recent example, Perri’s unique approach to combining resources to enhance faculty diversity resulted in a million dollar pool to support faculty hiring.
“Mike has an uncanny ability to identify innovative solutions to what can seem to be insurmountable barriers,” she said. “He comes up with these wonderfully elegant solutions to issues that would otherwise stymie our goals.”
The college as Perri leaves it today has strength and vision and has become a transformative college of public health, Frank said.
“He has grown the college, improved the research output and established PHHP as a significant part of the University of Florida,” Frank said. “It is hard to imagine another dean whose leadership has had the level of impact that Mike Perri has had on PHHP.”
For Perri, each graduation has marked some of his proudest moments as dean.
“Every commencement when our students come across the stage, I well up with pride at what we’re doing,” he said. “Ultimately, we want to make a difference in the lives of people for the better, and we do that in a variety of ways, but the most tangible is educating students who are going to go out and serve the people of the state of Florida and across the country and the globe in their roles as health professionals and public health practitioners. Along with that, the impact of our scientific work is, without a doubt, something we can take a lot of pride in.”
