Houston professor chosen new Tulane social work dean

Patrick Bordnick, professor and associate dean for research in the University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work, has accepted the appointment as the new dean of the School of Social Work at Tulane University.

The appointment, announced by Tulane provost Michael Bernstein, is effective July 1, 2016.

“His multi-faceted skills will allow Patrick to take optimal advantage of the university’s unique strengths and foster collaborations across all our schools, centers and institutes.”

Michael Bernstein, provost

He joins Tulane as Ron Marks concludes a distinguished 15-year tenure as social work dean. A member of the UH faculty since 2007, Bordnick also has served on the faculties of the University of Texas Health Science Center–San Antonio and the University of Georgia.

Bordnick has a PhD from the University of Georgia School of Social Work and a master’s degree in public health from the University of South Florida. He also completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center–Houston focused on substance abuse.

While at the University of Georgia, he received his first NIH grant to deploy virtual reality technology to study nicotine dependence. In 2007, he joined the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work where he founded the Virtual Reality Clinical Research Laboratory. The lab is a state-of-the-art facility that uses computerized technology to study human behavior for the assessment and treatment of addiction, as well as eating disorders and other mental health problems.

Bordnick has received an array of federal, state and foundation grants for research involving alcohol, cannabis, heroin and nicotine addiction; obesity; sexually transmitted diseases (in particular, HIV); and mental illness.

With a research background rooted in interdisciplinary collaborations that draw upon the fields of medicine, pharmacology, psychology, public health and social work, Bordnick works on integrating behavioral health care models with mobile data-collection techniques and virtual reality methodology.

Bordnick will be the ninth dean in the history of the School of Social Work, founded as a separate program at Tulane in 1927.