‘About more than me’

A faculty member from Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine has been named Oakland University’s inaugural Community Engagement Faculty Fellow.

Deidre Hurse, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Foundational Medical Studies, is serving in the role for the 2026-27 academic year.

In this leadership role, Hurse is collaborating with OU's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and the Research Office to expand and strengthen the university’s community-engaged teaching and research.

Further, she will support faculty by leading workshops, mentoring, and programming focused on service-learning and experiential learning opportunities, developing community-engaged research projects, and building meaningful community partnerships. Hurse will also help organize a campus-wide summit to encourage networking, generate new ideas, and advance community engagement initiatives.

David Dulio, Ph.D., chief community engagement officer, Oakland University, said the position was created because “OU has a great deal of potential to expand our community engagement efforts.”

“The Faculty Fellow will help us do that by adding capacity in key areas, not the least of which is helping us recruit faculty into the effort who may not know how to get involved,” he said.

Hurse said she feels “proud and excited to have this position.”

“But this is something that is about more than me.”

Practical, real-world implications

Hurse earned her bachelor’s in social work at the University of Michigan-Flint, then a Master of Public Administration (MPA), with a focus on health care management, from the University of Michigan-Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies.

She earned her Ph.D. in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at Indiana University.

Hurse started at OUWB in 2020.

Per her bio, Hurse’s work operates at the intersection of community-engaged scholarship and translational prevention science, focusing on how structural and community-level factors shape health outcomes.

Hurse teaches medical students across the curriculum in health promotion and prevention, with emphasis on health-harming social factors, systems-based practice, and the application of public health principles to clinical decision-making.

Further, she has led the development and implementation of longitudinal service-learning curricula that integrate community partnerships into required medical education, aligning experiential learning with measurable competencies and institutional priorities.

Hurse’s research program centers on health equity, communicable disease prevention, and maternal-infant health, with a focus on how health care systems, community infrastructure, and workforce capacity shape prevention delivery and population health outcomes.

She leads and collaborates on multiple community-engaged, mixed-methods studies, including projects focused on culturally grounded health resilience among descendants of enslaved Americans, maternal health resource access, and community-based HIV prevention initiatives.

Hurse said it’s most important that her efforts have practical, real-world implications.

“It’s more valuable personally to do something that I can see has an impact versus just doing research that sits on a shelf,” she said.

Such sentiments come from her own experiences with community organizations and health centers.

Hurse has extensive leadership experience in community health systems and enabling services. She has held executive and statewide leadership roles, including work with community health worker infrastructure and public health advisory bodies. She is an active member of the American Public Health Association and serves on the Michigan HIV/AIDS Council, contributing to policy and programmatic efforts to address health disparities.

With this backdrop, Hurse said it made sense for her to apply for the newly created Community Engagement Fellow position at OU.

“It’s where I came from,” she said. “I worked in community health centers for years…it’s what I’m most comfortable with and know.”

Dulio said Hurse was a logical choice to serve in the role.

“Dr. Hurse has great experience in community-engaged teaching and research,” he said. “Her work with the OUWB students and their community-engaged projects that are showcased every spring is just one example of her exemplary work.”

Launched in 2025, OUWB students present their service-learning projects in a schoolwide poster session aimed at drawing more attention to the importance of community engagement and academic research.

During the session, students share how their projects address real-world issues, ranging from public health initiatives to educational outreach.

“It’s been a delight to work with Deidre so far in her capacity as our first Faculty Fellow for Community Engagement,” said Dulio.

“Her expertise and passion show in every conversation we have.”