David Takeuchi was recently appointed associate dean for faculty excellence at the School of Social Work. In this position, he will look for ways to enable faculty, researchers and doctoral students to establish new research programs, enhance career trajectories and uncover new scholarship opportunities.
The position is housed in the newly created Office for Faculty Excellence and Research. Two senior faculty members will work with the office to advance scholarship and strategic career development. 
The newly created office is built on the School’s many years of research expertise and rigorous scholarship, observed Takeuchi, who worked at the University of Washington for 11 years before joining Boston College’s Graduate School of Social Work where he was Professor and Dorothy Book Scholar and Associate Dean for Research.
Takeuchi hopes to foster a climate that encourages and enables researchers to think about the next big idea, contribute to theoretical and methodological developments in the field, and pursue potentially risky research that has the potential to make substantive changes in diverse communities. “Our dean and our leadership team embrace a culture that supports incremental and transformational research that is imaginative and innovative within the current funding climate,” he said.
Among Takeuchi’s goals are developing a vision for the future of research at the School, leveraging its unique location in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest; working collaboratively with the School’s research and innovation centers; and cultivating more interdisciplinary partnerships with the other health sciences schools, the School of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences.
As a sociologist with postdoctoral training in epidemiology and health services research, Takeuchi studies the social, structural and cultural contexts associated with different health outcomes, especially among racial and ethnic minorities. He received the 2011 UW Marsha Landolt Distinguished Mentor Award, and in 2012, he was elected into the Washington State Academy of Sciences and the Sociological Research Association, an honor society of the nation’s top sociologists. He was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare in 2013.