University Times

About 160 applications and nominations — representing "a goodly number of excellent candidates" — have poured in to the committee seeking candidates for the newly combined job of senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences and dean of the School of Medicine, according to search committee chairperson H.J. Zoffer.

So far, a quarter of the 160 applicants and nominees have indicated definite interest in the job, either in writing or in phone conversations with search committee members, Zoffer said at a recent open hearing sponsored by the search committee.

But a number of potential candidates also have expressed concern about the senior vice chancellor's fiscal clout, he added.

A number of issues of resource allocation between Pitt and the UPMC Health System remain to be worked out, Zoffer noted. "Hopefully, a more definitive contractual relationship will be developed that will be attractive to candidates." In June, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg announced a restructuring of the Pitt-UPMC Health System relationship that drew clearer distinctions between the two institutions.

In addition to combining the positions of Health Sciences senior vice chancellor (the senior academic officer in the Health Sciences) and medical dean, the changes included moving the soon-to-be-unified medical faculty practice plan into the health system.

Previously, the 18 practice plans that will make up the unified plan were administered by a Pitt entity called the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Division. The University dissolved the division last summer.

The practice plans generate more than $200 million in revenue annually.

Pitt and health system officials are negotiating a multi-year, renewable contract to ensure a baseline of health system financial support for the Health Sciences schools.

"It's very complicated when you have hospitals, clinical practice plans and academic programs all operating in the same general environment," Zoffer noted. "Clearly, it's a thorny issue — how money will flow out of the practice plan into the University and its Health Sciences schools, and the degree to which the senior vice chancellor will influence that flow. It is an issue that candidates are raising, but we don't have answers yet because the new [practice plan] federation is not fully operational yet." Despite some candidates' concerns about the Pitt-UPMC Health System financial relationship, the academic medicine community nationwide seems to view the job — and Pitt itself — as being "very attractive," Zoffer said.

"Even candidates who have turned down the opportunity to apply for the job because they've just accepted positions elsewhere have had good things to say about the University of Pittsburgh. They see it as a place where exciting things are going on. Some have even offered to help evaluate candidates and to spread the word about the job among their colleagues." Whatever the University community's interest may be in the senior vice chancellor/medical dean job, faculty and staff steered clear of a pair of two-hour-long open hearings the search committee sponsored on Sept. 11 and 17. The first hearing was held in Scaife Hall, to encourage Health Sciences personnel to attend. A second, lower campus hearing was held in Forbes Quadrangle.

Only three Pitt faculty and staff members spoke during the hearings: University Senate President Gordon MacLeod, who said he was attending as a professor in the Graduate School of Public Health; Hector Tobon, a Magee Womens Hospital pathologist who is a faculty member in the medical school's pathology department; and Bart Whitehead, director of student services in the School of Dental Medicine. (Whitehead said he intended to sit in on last week's hearing as an observer. But considering he and a University Times reporter were the only non-members of the search committee in the room, Whitehead was drafted into asking questions.) Pitt administrative search hearings are notorious for low attendance. For example, a recent hearing sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean search committee attracted just one speaker and another professor who said he'd come to hear what other faculty had to say.

According to one member of the senior vice chancellor search committee, lower campus faculty tend to shun public hearings out of apathy or because they're too busy, whereas Health Sciences faculty have an additional reason: They fear retaliation by Health Sciences administrators.

Nathan Hershey, who is vice president of the University Senate, said: "The climate in the Health Sciences is not such that people want to express their views at a public forum like this. They definitely don't want to see themselves quoted in the press." Hershey, a health services administration professor, chairs a Senate committee that is studying whether Pitt's academic mission is compatible with the business goals of the health system.

Search committee chairperson Zoffer commented: "I can say that a number of things have been said to me privately by medical faculty that would never have been said in a public forum." In response to a question from Senate president MacLeod, Zoffer said it is "95 percent likely" that the new senior vice chancellor/dean will be a physician, "although we will certainly give serious consideration to highly qualified candidates from the other health sciences." Zoffer, who retired last year as dean of the Katz Graduate School of Business and the undergraduate College of Business Administration, said his committee hopes to give Chancellor Nordenberg the names of three-to-five finalists as early in 1998 as possible. "The chancellor has told the committee he would like to have the new senior vice chancellor on board by the beginning of the next academic year. But obviously, the highest priority will be to find the right person rather than to meet a specific deadline," Zoffer said.

Oct. 1 is the "semi-official" deadline for applications and nominations, but the search committee will continue to accept more of both beyond that date, Zoffer said. Correspondence should be sent to the search committee's office, 132 Cathedral of Learning (fax: 624-7697).

Zoffer said he also welcomes informal comments, suggestions and messages supporting individual candidates. Zoffer can be reached by phone at 624-2202 or by sending e-mail to zoffer@vms.cis.pitt.edu The new senior vice chancellor will succeed Thomas Detre. George Michalopoulos is interim dean of the medical school.

— Bruce Steele