Q&A with Dane Emmerling, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior

What was your background before joining the faculty at Gillings?

Dr. Dane Emmerling

I took a fairly winding route to being faculty at Gillings. I worked at Duke for many years both serving as an evaluator of global health programs aimed at supporting biomedical technicians in low resource settings and also working to support relationships between Duke faculty and community partners, most often through service-learning courses. I have had many jobs such as working in a bar, leading trips abroad for students, doing AmeriCorps, among other adventures.

Your pedagogy centers on sociopolitical development. How do you integrate this into your courses?

Sociopolitical development in my courses is defined as students not only learning about Public Health, but also seeing the stakes of their learning in their own lives and being invited into clarifying how they want to move through the world. In a leadership course this is fairly straightforward, but even in my PhD level theory course having students examine and refine their beliefs about epistemology and knowledge production are deeply related to sociopolitical development.

Could you share how you went about creating the Thailand Study Abroad program and what you hope students will take away from the experience?

Alice Ammerman and I co-lead the Thailand program which focuses on Public Health, Food Systems, and Social Entrepreneurship. We have three primary partners in creating this experience; Yunus Thailand, the Kenan Foundation of Asia, and Mae Fah Luang University. We have focused on building relationships with them, being clear in our learning goals, and then participating in experiences and projects that are ongoing with our partners who serve as stewards of the relationships. We have been so lucky to get invited into really amazing learning opportunities that we would never have been able to set up on our own, through investing in these partnerships.

What are you currently working on?

I am designing a course that focuses on the intersection of community organizing skills and professional development. I am working to get a few papers from my work with the Racial Equity Institute out in the next months. I am reading more about how systems thinking is currently being taught to public health students and thinking about ways that we can support and deepen those learning opportunities.

Is there a hobby or skill you’ve always wanted to learn but haven’t had the chance to yet?

I am always trying to develop some skills. My current projects are getting better at clawhammer banjo, raising some adolescent chickens, and getting tutored by one of our Thai partners in order to be able to have a conversation in Thai.