University Times

In replies so far to a letter from a committee of senior medical professors, 274 of the School of Medicine's approximately 1,300 full-time faculty members have said they want to form a faculty association.

Another 25 professors have said such an organization is unnecessary. "Many of the 25 who voted against the idea were department chairmen," according to pathology professor Bruce Rabin.

Rabin was named president-elect of the new organization — called the Faculty Association of the School of Medicine (FASM) — at an April 22 faculty meeting.

FASM leaders say the group will play the same role as faculty associations already active in most Pitt schools: promoting teaching and academic research, defending the rights and economic interests of faculty, and promoting faculty participation in school governance.

"Shared governance in the medical school has become abysmal in recent years. Through this new organization, we're hoping to promote faculty involvement in determining the school's future," Rabin said.

According to Rabin and some other professors, the School of Medicine's academic mission — as well as the earning power and employment status of its faculty — are at stake as officials from Pitt, UPMC Health System and the new University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP) unified practice plan negotiate a new financial relationship, through which the health system will absorb UPP.

See April 16 University Times.

About 100 professors signed up as dues-paying members of FASM at the April 22 faculty meeting.

In addition to Rabin, other FASM officers elected April 22 were Ralph Siewers, chairperson and professor of surgery (president), Toby Graham of the medicine department (secretary) and James V. Snyder of anesthesiology (treasurer).

FASM elected a treasurer for the same reason it charges dues of $25 per member: the organization plans to hire a lawyer to help determine the legal status of an earlier version of FASM.

During the 1970s and 1980s, when some professors sought unsuccessfully to unionize Pitt faculty, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board recognized FASM as a separate collective bargaining unit for School of Medicine faculty. But that incarnation of FASM last met in 1991, when the last faculty unionization election was held at Pitt.

Initially, FASM leaders considered changing the group's name to distance it from the earlier organization — and to avoid alienating professors opposed to faculty unions. "But then we all agreed that changing the name would just add more confusion," Rabin said.

In addition to electing officers, faculty at the April 22 meeting elected a five-member FASM council. It includes medical professors Nicholas Bircher (anesthesiology), David P. Greenberg (pediatrics), Tom Medsger (medicine), Margaret Ragni (medicine) and Basil Zitelli (pediatrics).

Bircher plans to report on FASM at the May 5 meeting of Faculty Assembly and ask the campus-wide Assembly to endorse the new medical school association.

One key figure in the medical school isn't likely to endorse FASM: interim Dean George Michalopoulos.

In a March 16 e-mail to medical faculty, Michalopoulos argued against a new faculty association.

Such an organization, Michalopoulos wrote, would create an unnecessary "parallel channel of communication" between faculty and administrators and would have "an overall disruptive and negative effect on the many and simultaneous transitions ongoing in the school."

— Bruce Steele