Lisa Rosen-Metsch

Sen. Lisa Rosen-Metsch '90GS is the 9th Dean of the Columbia School of General Studies and the first alumna to serve as Dean. Previously, she was the Chair and Stephen Smith Professor, Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. Dean Rosen-Metsch is a medical sociologist and an internationally recognized scholar whose work has focused on the social determinants of health with special focus on access to care for persons living with HIV and substance use disorders. For the past two decades, her research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has resulted in over 250 publications in high impact journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Addiction, and the American Journal of Public Health.

Mentoring and teaching has always been a high priority for Dean Rosen-Metsch and she has won numerous teaching awards and co-directs a NIH-funded training program with the Columbia School of Social Work. This spring, she taught a new seminar course in the Department of Sociology for undergraduates entitled “AIDS and U.S. Society” that explored how the HIV/AIDS epidemic transformed American society. In her time as Dean, Columbia GS has significantly increased fundraising for student financial aid scholarships, created and launched new international dual-degree programs, and created new initiatives focused on social justice and women student veterans.