Norman Scotch, 86; first dean of BU School of Public Health

In an introductory lecture he gave as founding dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, Norman Scotch laid out a key principle.

Noting that the tuition was among the highest in the country, he told students that they were "going to have very good teaching here," his wife, Freda, recalled.

By emphasizing teaching when the school was established in the late 1970s, Dr. Scotch attracted professors who knew how to engage with students, colleagues said.

"He really set a standard that we should focus on teaching, and I've really tried to maintain that," said Robert Meenan, who succeeded him as dean of the School of Public Health. "He really did set the tone, and I would say in particular the emphasis on teaching and emphasis on community connection, which is almost inherent in public health."

Dr. Scotch, who helped turn BU's School of Public Health into one of the largest in the country, died of ischemic colitis Nov. 25 in Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Fla. He was 86 and had been a longtime Brookline resident.

"Norm was the founding intellectual and emotional soul of the School of Public Health," said David Rosenbloom, a professor at the school.

To keep his promise for high-quality teaching, Dr. Scotch helped professors hone classroom skills, rather than just push them to publish or perish. He brought in experts in delivering information to large audiences, such as television personalities, and took time to sit in on classroom lectures and offer notes on each professor's presentation. Lectures were videotaped and critiqued to ensure students were taught effectively.

Each year, the Norman A. Scotch Award for Excellence in Teaching is presented to someone who makes an "outstanding and sustained contributions to the education program" of the School of Public Health, according to a BU website.

"The program was relatively small and relatively innovative, and that's how it started," said longtime colleague Leonard Glantz, an associate dean emeritus who teaches at the school. "As it turned out there were a lot more people than we knew who were interested in this sort of thing, and we began to draw crowds and it got bigger."

Dr. Scotch liked to quote liberally from movies, his family said, and other times he used humorous expressions to illuminate lessons, such as "you can teach a cat to carry a tray, but when it sees a mouse, it drops the tray" — a reminder that you cannot change the core of who a person is, Glantz said.

In his own courses, which he still taught while serving as dean, Dr. Scotch used real-world stories in lectures peppered with wry, self-deprecating humor. "On his best days, he could have made it as a stand-up comic," said Dr. Robert Master, a former student who now is CEO of Commonwealth Care Alliance.

Dr. Scotch wanted the school to serve working professionals who could take courses at night, a model many other institutions ultimately adopted.

"And Norm led it by example. Norm did not grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth," Master said, adding that "he carried the sensibility of the street in his head, which was very important."

Under Dr. Scotch's leadership, the school was brimming with creativity and support for its students, Master said.

"Norman Scotch has been one of the most important influences in my life as a teacher and a mentor, and as a revered elder statesman," Master said.

Norman A. Scotch grew up in Dorchester, where his father, a Russian immigrant, was a bricklayer, and his mother, a Lithuanian immigrant, was a homemaker. He graduated from English High School and enlisted in the Army in 1946, partly to take advantage of the GI Bill. Without that, he might not have been able to afford a bachelor's degree in psychology from Boston University. He went on to graduate from BU with a master's in sociology.

Dr. Scotch met Freda Lassow while they were working at the Hecht Neighborhood House, a settlement home in Dorchester that was a gathering place for the local Jewish community, and they married in 1954.

He graduated in 1957 with a doctorate in anthropology from Northwestern University's African studies program. Dr. Scotch and his wife then went to South Africa for two years to study hypertension among Zulu tribal members. He observed patients who moved into the city to find work, and became involved in extramarital affairs, and those who remained loyal to their spouses. The latter, he found, tended toward higher blood pressure. "It was the opposite of what we thought we would find," said his wife, who helped him conduct his research.

When they returned to the United States, he taught at what is now Washington State University and later graduated from Harvard University with a master's degree in public health in 1961. He stayed there to teach anthropology and medical epidemiology before joining the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Upon learning there was no swimming pool in his neighborhood, he told neighbors there would be one soon. Thirteen months later, a pool opened after he lobbied for its creation.

When BU's medical school was seeking someone to head a new sociomedical sciences program, Dr. Scotch returned to Boston and later developed what became the School of Public Health. "He made something out of nothing, literally," said Meenan, who recently stepped down as dean.

As a teacher and administrator, Dr. Scotch could toss off lines that offered as much guidance for life choices as they did for medical decisions. His son Stephen of New York City recalled that he would advise: "Prepare, and then let the organism take over." By that, his son said, Dr. Scotch meant: "You're just going to begin and the next thing you know, your mind and body will take over and do what you need to do."

Seeking advice, students and colleagues often stopped by Dr. Scotch's office, which he adorned with numerous items he picked up during his travels and artwork by his daughter, Ruth of Natick.

"He said it was very important to take the high road, and let right be done, and to be a champion," she said. "Those were things we always heard throughout our lives."

A memorial gathering will be announced for Dr. Scotch, who in addition to his wife, son, and daughter, leaves another son, Kenneth of Austin; and three grandchildren.

Dr. Scotch's wife said that one time when he was ill, and they were in a waiting room filled with glum-looking patients, he started quoting from a movie and boosting spirits of those around him. By the time the doctor was ready to see the next patient, everyone in the room was "alive and talking," she said. "He had that kind of personality."

Outside work, he was an amateur artist, creating portraits of people he knew, and he wrote screenplays.

Dr. Scotch also "was probably one of Boston's most sophisticated poker players," Master said. "You did not want to play against him when money was on the line."