public health matters

Rooted in Community

How academic community-building and personal growth intertwine.

I am simply delighted by the sense of community I feel as a member of BUSPH.  I remain a strong believer in the seemingly paradoxical belief that the feeling of community actually benefits individuals. To argue that you should embrace community because it is good for you as an individual is to make a strangely selfish case. 

So let me try.  I think the idea of community seemingly sits perpendicular to the notion of independence, the quintessential American myth and self-description. We go alone into our offices, to our computers and Zoom rooms, to accomplish the day’s work: to take a class, to write a grant, to check off something on the ever-growing list, to better ourselves. We work to learn new skills and improve our CVs to become increasingly self-reliant, self-determinative, with an eye toward our value in the marketplace when we look for the next job, the next grant. The work we often pursue is highly individualistic and competitive. We each grow as a single tree, reaching up, seeking the sun, adding rings. Independence makes us better, freer, happier.

The very different orientation of interdependence envisions our school as a union of twisted roots, where we are engaged with co-workers. In this environment it is difficult, if not impossible, to work alone for long. We want to be trusted partners—when we do a group presentation, when as collaborators we write different sections of a paper or document or proposal, when we serve on a committee together.  How does thinking of ourselves in terms of the underground end of the tree, entangled with others, help us individually, grow, add rings to our CV? By helping each of us figure out who we are, what we believe (which includes agreement and disagreement), and to recall why we have chosen to be here at SPH, what this special place offers us and we might offer in return. An academic community provides access to others’ free expression in order to fully understand our own ideas. A strong community is one that enables, even fosters self-criticism, and allows honest self-assessment, important aspects of individualism.

Which is not to say that interdependence is always anchoring or uplifting. It can feel suffocating down there in the roots. Feeling that we must depend on others goes against our independent streaks. 

We know what an uncaring community looks like. Halls that are silent. People pass without looking up or saying hello. An environment that ridicules the human desire to congregate. A day in the office is an endurance test, a form of loneliness. When we have no community, we are imperiled. Work, where we spend so much of our lives, is where we share celebration and anguish, doubt and defeat, brilliance and errors in judgement. It is where our minds “dance together” in Toni Morrison’s phrase. 

Community, by nature, is slow-forming and its power comes to us only through a slow awareness. You see it when difficult circumstances arise, an illness, the death of a colleague’s spouse, or problems with a colleague’s mother or child. Interdependence requires quiet acts of caring and looking out for others, mentoring, listening, sharing, letting go. It requires down time and coffee breaks, virtual or with shared stirrers. Then we can begin to see and feel community’s transformative power. 

Academic communities are about creating and producing and distributing knowledge. Our mission is to make health better. In how we think of doing this, the SPH community shapes us. The environment where our work is done is, I hope, supportive. Community is more than feeling included, it means feeling welcomed.  It is how we attract new students, staff and faculty. It is a manifestation of what we stand for. When braided with our natural and inevitable drive for independence, interdependence allows for the possibility of personal betterment because our complex world now demands collaboration. As we move deeper into 2025, we look beyond the boundaries and bloodlines of our department, past our current collaborators and this semester’s students. The walls of universities have largely been symbolic; we need to remain in touch with the currents of broader society and the health of all. We look to expand and include.

Community-forming requires identification, attachment and participation, but also respect. We owe it to ourselves to have a community where arguing, debating, persuading, disagreeing—things you can’t do alone—are the norm. Each of us is better for these pursuits.

Michael Stein, MD

Dean Ad Interim
Boston University School of Public Health
mdstein@bu.edu

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