University Times

Search committee members outnumbered the audience by at least 3:1 at the first of two public meetings conducted in the search for a new senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences.

Attendance at the Oct. 20 meeting in Scaife Hall was so bad, in fact, that at its peak the audience never numbered more than four persons, and two of those people were reporters.

Search committee Chairperson Mark Nordenberg nevertheless kept the meeting in session for more than a hour to accommodate late arrivals who might want to address the committee. But nobody appeared.

Of the people on hand for the meeting, two did speak to the committee. They were Nathan Hershey, a faculty member in the Graduate School of Public Health, and medical student Michael Banks.

Speaking from a prepared text, Hershey told the committee that the ideal candidate to provide academic leadership and oversight of the Health Sciences is already at the University: Provost James Maher.

"This is an individual who has a strong record as a scientist," Hershey said. "As an administrator he has experience as a department chairperson and is highly thought of by faculty and the University administration." Hershey suggested that the University place all of the Health Sciences, except the School of Medicine, under the provost. He said that the School of Medicine should remain with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center because it is more closely involved with delivering health services than the other schools.

According to Hershey, the position of senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences should be eliminated and the other schools placed under the provost because they are academic units and the provost is the chief academic officer of the University. Hershey said that if the position of senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences is eliminated, staff and faculty who are now part of the Health Sciences either could be placed under the provost or made part of the UPMC, depending upon the area in which they work.

According to Hershey, there already is a precedent for such a move with the recent joining of the offices of Public Affairs and Student Affairs under Leon Haley.

"The advantage would be to put all the regular academic units under the chief academic administrator of the University," he said. "We eliminate a duplicate structure and I would think that it might be possible to save substantial amounts of money by getting rid of a lot of people who are not necessary were we to emerge the academic aspects of the Health Sciences under the provost." When asked if he knew of any institutions where such a move had been undertaken, Hershey could not provide any examples. But, he pointed out, Baylor University and Baylor Medical Center are separate institutions without ties to one another and Pitt might learn something from examining them.

Medical student Banks asked the search committee where it had placed advertisements for the position and when it might reach a decision on a list of final candidates.

"It is our goal to provide the chancellor with a list of recommended candidates in the month of March," Nordenberg said.

To date, advertisements for the position have been placed in eight publications: the University Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the National Medical Association, Science and The Affirmative Action Register.

This search for a new senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences was launched with the formation of the search committee late this summer.

The current search is the second undertaken to find a successor for Thomas Detre as senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences. Detre announced his plans to retire more than two years ago and originally planned to leave the University on Aug. 31, 1993. But, after the first search failed, Detre agreed to remain at his post until a successor was found.

The first search ended in summer 1993 when the University was unable to reach agreement with any of the four finalists for the position. Former search committee chairperson Edward Stricker said in the Sept. 2, 1993, issue of the University Times that the committee was thanked for its work and dismissed with a letter from Chancellor J. Dennis O'Connor in mid August 1993.

"It was one of those things," Stricker said at the time. "You have a search and you do your best, but there are no guarantees you're going to succeed. They weren't able to come to a mutual understanding on both sides." The four candidates recommended to the chancellor by the first search committee included: William Roper, who was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and has since accepted a job as president of Prudential Health Care System's National Center for Health Care Research; B. Stephenson Bunney, chairperson of the Yale psychiatry department; Herbert Pardes, Columbia University's vice president for health sciences, and Gilbert Omenn, dean of the University of Washington's School of Public and Community Science.

A second search was planned for the fall of 1993, but was postponed by Chancellor O'Connor in September 1993. At the time, O'Connor said he was delaying the search because of the introduction of President Bill Clinton's national health care reform package and its implications for academic health centers.

In a memorandum on the subject, O'Connor said Detre would continue as senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences because "the need for consistent leadership in the University's Health Sciences is paramount" in light of coming changes in the health care field.

In addition, O'Connor said he was delaying the search because there was a search going on for a permanent provost. He said "we must pay close attention to the continuity in leadership within the University administration" while that search is being conducted.

In the Sept. 30, 1993, issue of the University Times, however, University Senate leaders expressed concern that it might be difficult to fill the position of senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences because the job is viewed as subordinate to that of Jeffrey Romoff, president of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Since June 1992, Detre has overseen only academic programs in Health Sciences.

Romoff assumed administrative duties previously held by Detre when Chancellor O'Connor named Romoff senior vice chancellor for Health Administration and president of the medical center in 1992.

–Mike Sajna