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June 12, 1997

Health Sciences senior VC will also serve as medical school dean

Pitt's next senior vice chancellor for the Health Sciences will also be dean of the School of Medicine.

Chancellor Mark Norden-berg announced his decision to combine the jobs in his June 6 Campus Update letter to the University community.

"This organizational model is one that has been effectively employed at other institutions and should add strength to the position of the chief academic leader of the Health Sciences, something that will be essential in the challenging times that lie ahead," Nordenberg wrote.

The search for a new Health Sciences senior vice chancellor to succeed Thomas Detre began last month. It is the third such search since 1992, when Detre first announced plans to retire.

The first search ended in summer 1993 when Pitt failed to reach agreement with any of the four finalists. The Board of Trustees called off the second search in May 1995 following Chancellor J. Dennis O'Con-nor's resignation; board leaders said that naming Detre's successor should wait until trustees appointed a new, permanent chancellor.

Members of earlier search committees said it was difficult to recruit a new senior vice chancellor because candidates saw the job as lacking in budgetary clout and as being too subordinate to the president of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).

Combining the jobs of the Health Sciences senior vice chancellor and the medical dean is just one of a series of changes Nordenberg has said he plans to make in the relationships among Pitt, its medical school and UPMC. In an interview this week, Nordenberg said it would be premature at this point for him to reveal the full extent of the reorganization. "The process is still ongoing," he said. "Certain changes could take place by the end of the fiscal year [June 30]. Other changes may wait until the end of the calendar year." Still other changes "might be implemented only when a successor to Dr. Detre has been named," Nordenberg said.

The chancellor said "it is very likely, but not certain" that he will publicly unveil his Pitt-UPMC realignment plan at the June 26 Board of Trustees meeting.

— Bruce Steele


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