March

Welcome to the first issue of the Dean’s E-Newsletter! This will be a monthly publication with the purpose of keeping the College of Medicine community informed about what is happening administratively in the College of Medicine. Future issues will include information from other departments and offices as well. It is my intent to keep everyone abreast of changes in the College of Medicine, particularly as we embark on our strategic planning process.

April

I hope you all had a wonderful Spring Break! It was certainly a well-deserved break for everyone who worked so hard to make the LCME Site Visit a tremendous success. I want to personally thank everyone who was involved in the process. The entire visit went very smoothly.

May

May is a busy month at the College of Medicine with several events on the calendar. I encourage all of you to attend as many events as possible to support our students – particularly our 4th year students as we congratulate them on a job well done and send them off to their residency programs.

June

I hope all of you enjoyed your long Memorial Day Weekend! As we head into the summer, we will be focusing on our planning efforts as we anticipate the completion of a Strategic Plan for the College by the end of the summer. At that time, the implementation phase of our planning process will begin. I will continue to keep you posted as the planning process proceeds.

July

I hope everyone is having a great summer! It is hard to believe that the students will be back the end of this month for orientation.

August

What is our vision? That is the question that Heads/Chairs, Dean's Staff and the Strategic Planning Committee work groups have wrestled with the past couple of months. The debate has increased in intensity and urgency since the Strategic Planning Retreat in early July. It has become clear to me that the central theme to all these discussions is the notion that we need to grow and we aspire to be famous. To become famous, the College, its faculty and students must continue to work toward achieving national excellence in education, research, clinical care and outreach. These goals are precisely aligned between the two campuses, but unfortunately, the planning process has tended to cluster around the "needs" of each campus. Geography and historic rivalries regrettably create a myopic vision of what the College can collectively achieve. However, we are united by our desire to achieve notoriety in academic medicine, to continue our tradition of highly personalized educational experiences for medical and graduate students, and to achieve national and international fame for leading edge research and clinical care. This must be our unifying and rallying vision.

September

Things are moving along with the Life Sciences Initiative and our collaboration with TAMU. We are back at the table, and Drs. McCallum, Scholtz, and I have been involved in the planning process. I am excited about this, and will keep you posted on our progress.

October

This month there have been a couple of key personnel changes in the Office of the Dean. Please join me in welcoming Summer Hicks Morgan and Kathy Warren to the College of Medicine. Summer is the new Communications Specialist and will be responsible for all communications functions of the College. Kathy Warren began her duties on October 1st as the new Assistant to the Dean, replacing Diana Foster who left in September. We are very excited to have both of them join us, and we look forward to working with them.

November

October was a busy month. I have been on the road every week for professional events, meetings with legislators and appointments with potential donors. Several of us from the college will be attending the AAMC Annual Meeting Nov. 5-10 in Boston. The hectic schedule doesn’t end there though, as I have more meetings to attend in November!

December

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was nice to have a couple of days to get caught up on things over the holiday weekend.