Lei-Shih (Lace) Chen
Professor Health Promotion & Community Health SciencesPromoting Community-Engaged Worksite Health Promotion Teaching and Learning
The community-engaged teaching and learning project that Dr. Chen will lead during the fellowship will engage her students in the development, implementation, and evaluation of worksite health promotion programs for workers with disabilities in Bryan and College Station (BCS), Texas. Specifically, this project will give Texas A&M University students the opportunity to use the knowledge gained from the HLTH 410 Worksite Health Promotion course to provide critically needed assistance to BCS workers with disabilities. The students will work in groups to: (1) develop a worksite health promotion program that addresses health issues that are important to people with disabilities in BCS workplaces, and (2) evaluating existing worksite health promotion programs for people with disabilities in BCS workplaces. Local disability communities will also benefit from the products produced by students to promote better health for their members.
Dr. Lei-Shih (Lace) Chen received her Ph.D. in Health Education from Texas A&M University in 2007, joined the Department of Health and Kinesiology in 2009, was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2014 and promoted to full professor in the Department of Health Behavior of the Texas A&M University Health Science Center School of Public Health in 2023. In her nearly 15 years of service at Texas A&M University, Dr. Chen has taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses, chaired or co-chaired 39 graduate student committees (29 having graduated thus far), and mentored 10 post-doctoral associates (nine having completed training to date), and over 300 undergraduate students. Dr. Chen’s teaching efforts have been recognized via teaching and education awards including the Department of Health and Kinesiology Teacher of the Year in Health Education Award (2015), the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching (2022), and the Education Award of the American Society of Human Genetics (2023).