Elizabeth Conlisk

Elizabeth Conlisk, dean of the School of Natural Science and professor of public health, received her B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and M.S. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from Cornell University. She has a wide range of public health experience at local, state, national, and international agencies, including the North Carolina Department of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Instituto de Nutricion de Centro America y Panama in Guatemala.

Professor Conlisk teaches classes in epidemiology, statistics, public health, and topics that lie at the intersection of culture and biology. Her research focuses on cancer prevention, especially cervical cancer screening in Latin America. She has served on the Hampshire Board of Trustees and as the director of the Five College Program in Culture, Health and Science, an interdisciplinary certificate program for students interested in the socio-political and biologic bases of health.

Recent and Upcoming Courses

Field Study Semester
Epidemiology
NS 248 is an introduction to the principles and practice of epidemiology and the use of data in program planning and policy development. The course covers the major concepts usually found in a graduate-level introductory course in epidemiology: outbreak investigations, study design, measures of effect, internal and external validity, reliability, and causal inference. Assigned readings are drawn from a standard textbook and the primary literature. In addition, students read case studies and work step-by-step through major epidemiologic investigations of the past century; they also form small groups to design and conduct a small epidemiologic study on campus. The major assignments are four case studies, regular response papers/worksheets on the readings, a critique of a primary paper, a poster presentation of the on-campus study, and a proposal for an epidemiologic study of their own design.