Letters from Leadership
Bradford C. Berk, M.D., Ph.D.
CEO, University of Rochester Medical Center,
Senior Vice President for Health Sciences
Physicians work in the here and now to understand the problems of their patients and determine the best treatment. But, whether we are in private practice, hospital-based or physician scientists in a lab, we also look to the future—recommending preventive measures to preserve good health, always improving the care we provide, and searching for solutions and cures to today’s problems and diseases in order to help human health.
This working in the present and for the future goes on in exam rooms and laboratories hundreds of times every day in our Medical Center. We are about making life “ever better.”
“Ever better,” as Rochester Medicine readers know, also is the translation of the University of Rochester’s motto, Meliora. It also is the theme of The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester, which has a goal of raising $1.2 billion by 2016.
This campaign is vitally important for the future success of the School of Medicine and Dentistry and the University of Rochester Medical Center health care delivery system.
More than half of the campaign goal—$650 million–will support Medical Center and School of Medicine and Dentistry projects and programs. This campaign will include funds to help us in our quest to cure and prevent disease, attract and recognize our top scientists and expert clinicians, help our students pursue their dreams, and provide quality health care.
The Medical Center’s $650 million campaign goal includes $100 million for a new Golisano Children’s Hospital, as well as academic and clinical programs that will make the Medical Center the destination for upstate pediatric health care. The current children’s hospital is part of Strong Memorial Hospital, and lacks the identity that a new Golisano Children’s Hospital will present. Furthermore, the new patient rooms and facilities will better match the world-class medicine practiced here and facilitate the patient-and-family-centered care that is necessary for patients and providers.
The fundamental, translational and clinical research programs of the School of Medicine and Dentistry are facing unique financial challenges due to the decrease in funding by the National Institutes of Health. We are committed to supporting research into basic biological mechanisms as well as new treatments and cures by our excellent faculty. But we must seek alternative support for this research through more endowed professorships and endowments for individual research programs. These, too, are goals of The Meliora Challenge.
As graduates, we realize the important role our School of Medicine and Dentistry and its faculty played in our lives. In addition to raising money for faculty retention, recruitment and research, The Meliora Challenge will raise funds for scholarships and fellowships so we can continue to attract the best students to the School of Medicine and Dentistry and ease their financial burden.
The state of the economy makes these difficult times for all of us. But I believe every graduate of the School of Medicine and Dentistry appreciates how important the campaign is to enable us to survive the present challenges and build for the future. I hope you will listen to your hearts and minds to support the School and the Medical Center that have given each of us so many gifts during our own education. For more about The Meliora Challenge, go to the website at http://campaign.rochester.edu.
Mark Taubman, M.D.
Dean of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry
Vice President for Health Sciences
In October at the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Convocation, I had the pleasure of officially presenting 10 endowed chairs and professorships. We had 10 handsome chairs lined up across the front of the Class of 1962 Auditorium. You will find an album of the recipients in this issue of Rochester Medicine.
Nothing is more important to our institution than our faculty, and the quality of our faculty is the cornerstone of everything we do.
Our School of Medicine and Dentistry has long been known for faculty excellence. We must do everything we can to keep the faculty we treasure and to recruit excellence for the future. The troubled economy and tightened funding from traditional sources like the National Institutes of Health are making this goal a challenge, to say the least.
Endowed chairs and professorships are not just honorary titles. Endowed faculty positions help the School retain and also attract faculty. Endowments help us continue or expand research, teaching and clinical care. Endowed faculty positions are enduring. They will last as long as the University. Endowments honor excellence, but they also are hallmarks of excellence.
Four of the 10 endowments presented at Convocation are new. Philip and Marilyn Wehrheim have established a professorship for cancer research. William and Sheila Konar have supported a professorship for clinical research into Alzheimer’s and other disease that affect memory and thinking. A gift from C. Jane Davis and C. Robert Davis established a professorship for pulmonary medicine research. Colleagues and friends of Robert J. Joynt, M.D., Ph.D., in the Department of Neurology have established a professorship to honor the man who founded that department.
The School of Medicine and Dentistry needs many more professorships and chairs like these.
You will hear frequently about The Meliora Challenge: The Campaign for the University of Rochester, which has a goal of raising $1.2 billion by 2016. This campaign is very important to the Medical Center and to the School of Medicine and Dentistry. The Meliora Challenge also is the perfect vehicle for the establishment of endowed faculty positions and donations to those endowments.
We need to create more endowed faculty positions if we are to continue to be the great institution we are. I hope at Convocations in the future there is not enough room for all the chairs we will be presenting.
In this issue of Rochester Medicine, you will find a profile of Don Bordley, who holds an endowed position as the William L. Morgan Professor in Medicine. You also will read about several School of Medicine and Dentistry alumni, who returned to the School and joined the faculty. Both articles offer more evidence for supporting excellence and endowed chairs and professorships.
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Online Specials:
Match Day 2012
The drama of Match Day moved to Whipple Auditorium this year, where both tension and spirits were high.
The Future of Medical Education
Philip Pizzo, M.D., dean of the Stanford School of Medicine and a Class of 1970 graduate of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, discussed the future of medical education during a January visit to Rochester.
Power of Posters
Intrigued by a poster about preventing AIDS that he saw on a Boston subway car in the early 1990s, Edward Atwater, M.D. (M '50), began collecting AIDS education posters to track how different societies viewed and responded to the epidemic.
Praising and sustaining the Rochester model
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