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1st appeared 17 June 1998 Education the Priority for School of Medicine Dean Haile Debas announced some good news for education on Monday during his State of the School of Medicine address, including new programs and initiatives geared toward supporting this "core mission." He also discussed the state of patient care, particularly in light of the merger of clinical services with Stanford, and of research, with an emphasis on the planning of the Mission Bay campus. A boost for medical students who are faced with thousands of dollars worth of debt is coming in the form of a $1 million endowment for scholarships, Debas announced. The average debt incurred by the school's graduates is almost $48,000, and some students have as much as $70,000 to repay for their education, Debas said. Established by the Bernard Osher Foundation, the scholarship program begins in the winter quarter of 1999, and when it is fully implemented, nine students will receive approximately $5,500 a year for the last three years of medical school. Debas also reviewed the state of minority representation at the medical school. Despite the Regents' ban on affirmative action and Proposition 209, the school experienced only a 6% decline in applications of underrepresented minorities for the 1997 entering class, and 1998 figures look even better, Debas said. "The 1998 entering class is not fully composed, but at this point I understand that our numbers are actually better than two years ago," Debas said. "This is very encouraging." Debas said he was also "upbeat" about UCSF-Fresno, which recently received a permanent budget augmentation of $4.5 million from the state legislature. "We are restructuring our Fresno faculty, and reviewing and strengthening our relationship with our multiple partners in Fresno," Debas said. "We hope to construct a new UCSF-Fresno building at community hospitals to house our academic programs, faculty and state-of-the-art information system." In keeping with this focus on education, the topic for the 1999 School of Medicine Leadership Retreat will be education, Debas said. "This represents a welcome change from the retreat topics that have focused on medical practice and managed care for the past five years -- a return to our core mission," he said. Debas spoke of the generous donations that have been made to UCSF, benefiting patients and students alike. Donations have allowed for the creation of new programs, such as the Center for the Neurobiology of Addiction and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, and the establishment of endowed chairs and distinguished professorships. For example, a patient has given UCSF $2.5 million to establish the Isis Distinguished Professorship in honor of Nancy Ascher, professor and vice chair of surgery and chief of transplant services at UCSF Stanford Health Care. As his term as chancellor comes to a close, Debas promised to hold regular meetings with the chairs of clinical departments to review the "successes as well as the challenges of the merger" and to "work closely with the chairs and faculty to monitor the developments to protect UCSF's clinical, financial and academic interests and to promote better integration," he said. Debas said that he was "amazed" by the speed with which the plans for the Mission Bay campus are developing and identified the programs to move there during the project's first phase: structural and chemical biology; cell, molecular and developmental biology; human genetics; and a developmental neuroscience group. "Construction is slated to begin in mid-1999 and occupation of the premises to occur some two or three years after that," Debas said. "I never thought I would see a second UCSF campus in my lifetime, much less during my deanship, but I think it's going to happen." By Paula Murphy Links: Daybreak UCSF's Fresno Program Thriving UCSF Receives $10 Million Gift for New Integrative Medicine Center Related sites |
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