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Our History

The Founding Directors of the Rural Health Research Institute

In the Fall of 2009, Dr. Bryant Smalley of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) and Dr. Jacob Warren of the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health (JPHCOPH) met with their respective Deans and University Administration to form a structure to promote cross-college collaborative projects focused on rural health. Recognizing the vast collaborative potential of the rural health focus of both Colleges, the University supported the formation of the Rural Health Research Alliance, creating a formal connection between the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health. The goal of the Alliance was to increase external funding for rural health research and outreach at Georgia Southern University by creating interdisciplinary, cross-college research teams. The Alliance was formed to pilot organized collaborations across academic Colleges within the University with the intention of expansion to include other academic units across campus, the first of which to be the College of Health and Human Sciences (CHHS). The Alliance represented the first step to formalize collaborations among the three units.

In the Spring of 2010, President Brooks Keel announced the first ever cluster hiring competition at Georgia Southern University, designed to elicit faculty-led proposals for expanding the University's focus on a centralized theme with the capacity to bring together diverse units across campus in interdisciplinary research. Based upon the success of the Alliance in securing funds and generating scholarly works, Drs. Warren and Smalley invited Dr. Elaine Marshall from CHHS to jointly submit a cluster hiring proposal. The RHRI proposal was unanimously supported by the Deans of the aforementioned Colleges, selected by the Council of Deans amongst many competing proposals for consideration of funding, and finally selected as the sole finalist for funding by President Keel and the members of the President's Cabinet in late 2010. The Alliance was officially transformed into the Rural Health Research Institute (RHRI) in January 2011.