Dorian Traube, a professor in the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California, has been appointed as the next dean of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, effective Aug. 1, announced Chancellor Andrew D. Martin.
Traube will succeed Tonya Edmond and Rodrigo Reis, professors and interim co-deans at the Brown School, who have served as interim deans since January 2022.
“I’m very excited that Dorian Traube will be the next dean of the Brown School,” Martin said. “The Brown School is a center of excellence for Washington University, and with an innovative leader like Dorian guiding the strategic vision, I’m confident we are well-positioned for even greater impact.”
“I want to thank Tonya Edmond and Rodrigo Reis for their outstanding service as interim co-deans. Their leadership of the Brown School over the past year has continued to advance the school’s mission of putting evidence-based research into practice.”
Traube has been on the USC faculty since 2006. Her research focuses on early child development, home visitation and telehealth solutions for families with young children.
Traube developed Parents as Teachers@Telebehavioral Health Clinic at USC, the first partnership of its kind between a national home visitation model and a university-based telehealth clinic. In doing so, she also established the first virtual home visitation program, offering a reliable home visitation model via video conferencing technology.
This program was chosen as a Named Commitment by the Clinton Global Initiative and was selected the winner of the Gary Community Investment/OpenIDEO Early Childhood Innovation Prize. In three years, the program offered more than 1,000 home visits and trained 25 home visitors in virtual service delivery strategies.
Traube’s research into the telehealth program laid the foundation for a $1.2 million effort, funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation, to make virtual home visitation available nationally during the COVID-19 crisis.
“The Brown School is renowned for its strengths in research, education, and practice,” said Beverly Wendland, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Dorian’s scholarship and demonstrated leadership position her well to lead one of the finest schools of social work in the country.”
“We have a tremendous history of achievement in social work, and, as we lay the foundation for a new era of public health at WashU, I look forward to partnering with Dorian and all our school deans in our shared pursuit of academic distinction.”
Traube’s research agenda focuses on the utilization of technological solutions to provide early childhood health, education and parent support services. She has expertise in children’s mental health, child maltreatment prevention, family support interventions and home visitation.
Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Parsons Foundation, Queenscare Foundation, and the Overdeck Foundation. Traube is on the California Emerging Technology Fund board of directors.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to be named dean of the Brown School at Washington University,” Traube said. “The Brown School’s rich tradition of excellence in social work and public health, gifted students, innovative faculty, and the impact of their collaborative, problem-solving research and scholarship is evident locally, regionally and globally. I’m eager to partner with them, as together we strive to solve society’s greatest challenges.”
Traube earned master’s and doctoral degrees in social work from Columbia University and is a licensed clinical social worker in California and New York.
