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BULLETIN
Mentoring and Mentors Honored at Barger CeremonyThe Fifth Annual A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Awards were handed out during a March 23 ceremony in the MEC amphitheater. The honorees for excellence in mentoring were David Corey, professor of neurobiology at Massachusetts General Hospital; Russell Phillips, associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess; and Jane Weeks, associate professor of medicine at Dana–Farber. The honorees for lifetime achievement in mentoring were Ramzi Cotran, the Frank Burr Mallory professor of pathology at Brigham and Women's, and Thomas Gutheil, professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center. J. Tyson Tildon, retired professor of pediatrics and biological chemistry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, gave a keynote presentation on the importance of mentoring. Tildon distinguished among various ways of educating, such as counseling, coaching, advising, and tutoring. Mentoring, he said, in many ways transcends all of these because it demands a personal relationship. "You can advise someone you don't like, but you can't mentor someone you don't like," Tildon said. The awards were presented by former mentees of the recipients, who told stories of how their mentors had influenced them personally and professionally. The honorees credited their own mentors as having a great influence on their careers.
Keynote speaker J. Tyson Tildon, faculty dean for faculty development and diversity William Silen, and honoree Ramzi Cotran (l to r) offer remarks at the Barger ceremony. Photo by Liza Green Faculty Examiners Needed for OSCEHMS faculty examiners are needed to administer the recently adopted, comprehensive method of evaluating second- and fourth-year students. Called an OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination), the procedure was designed to evaluate a student's ability to integrate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they have learned, as well as offer insight into the design of the curriculum. One of the aims of adopting this format is to familiarize students with this mode of examination, which will become part of the board exams, the NBME, in the coming years. Faculty are invited to participate as faculty preceptors, offering students direct feedback on physical examination, clinical reasoning, communication, and other skills, which students last year said was the most valuable part of the exam. The fourth-year OSCE will take place from July 24 to August 3. CME credit is available for faculty participants. For more information, please contact Julia Graham at 432-1808 or oscecoordinator@hms.harvard.edu. Former NIH Director to Speak at Soma Weiss Day ProgramThe 60th annual Soma Weiss Day, presented by the HMS Office for Enrichment Programs, will be held April 13. Named in memory of a renowned HMS professor, the event gives students a chance to share their research with the Harvard medical community. There will be poster sessions, HMS/HSDM student presentations, and a keynote address by Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center and former NIH director, titled "Mouse Models for Human Cancer." Students participating in the event will receive a copy of Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues by Paul Farmer, HMS associate professor of social medicine. Activities will take place in the MEC atrium and amphitheater from 1:00 to 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 432-3181. In Memoriam
Charles Davidson, the William Bosworth Castle emeritus professor of medicine, died March 15 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 89. Born in Berkeley, Calif., Davidson earned his AB from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1934, and his MD and CM degrees from McGill University Medical School in 1939. After his residency at San Francisco General Hospital, Davidson joined the Boston City Hospital (BCH) Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, where he became associate director of the Harvard services and associate director of the Thorndike lab. For 32 years, with main interests in the liver, nutrition, and infectious diseases, he performed research, cared for patients—including victims of the Coconut Grove fire—and taught physicians. From 1970 to 1972, he served as acting head of the Department of Medicine at BCH. In 1974, he was appointed director of the Clinical Research Center at MIT. For more than 25 years, Davidson was in charge of selecting, supervising, and mentoring residents and research fellows in the Harvard Medical Unit at BCH. He also supervised the clinical training of HMS students at BCH. He was chairman of the food and nutrition board of the American Medical Association, a member of the nutrition committee of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and a member of the Roxbury Clinical Records Club. Davidson helped bring medical services to outer Cape Cod, as a founder of the AIM Medical Center and board member of the Outer Cape Health Services. He is survived by his cousins, Newton Booth Knox and Victor Knox of Maryland, and Stephen Knox of California, and friend Robert Bednarek of Truro, Mass. A memorial service will be held in early June at Memorial Church of Harvard University, Cambridge. New Full and Endowed ProfessorshipsThese faculty members were appointed to a full professorship in February. Stuart Bauer Bauer is a pediatric urologist and director of the Urodynamics Laboratory at Children's Hospital. His major interest has been the physiology of bladder function in children. His research efforts have spearheaded a new, proactive approach to the management of bladder dysfunction in newborns and children with myelodysplasia around the world. He has served as chairman of the section on urology of the American Academy of Pediatrics and currently is president of the medical staff at Children's. Umberto De Girolami De Girolami is director of the combined Brigham and Women's Hospital/Children's Hospital Neuropathology Training Program, chief of neuropathology at Brigham and Women's, and staff neuropathologist at Children's. His principal research effort in experimental neuropathology has been to attempt to define the factors that improve central nervous system tissue (brain and spinal cord) survival after ischemic injury. His research interests in human neuropathology include the nervous system in patients with AIDS; diseases of the spinal cord; and neuromuscular diseases of children and adults. Ashby Moncure Moncure is a general, vascular, and general thoracic surgeon. He is past president of the Boston Surgical Society and current president of the New England Surgical Society. His research interests include gastrointestinal hemorrhage, renal artery surgery, and surgical diseases of the esophagus. Frank Sellke Sellke is a cardiothoracic surgeon and the interim chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His clinical interests include therapeutic coronary angiogenesis and adult coronary and valvular heart disease. His particular laboratory interests are alterations in vasomotor regulaton and signal transduction that occur during extracorporal circulation, myocardial ischemia, and angiogenesis. Leslie Silberstein Silberstein is the new chief of the transfusion medicine/biology blood bank programs at Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. His research interests include B lymphocyte biology and the role of chemokines in hematopoiesis. These full professors were appointed to an endowed chair in February. Benjamin Sachs Sachs's background is in obstetrics, gynecology, maternal–fetal medicine, and public health. His academic interest is public health and health policy as it relates to maternal and child health, both in this country and abroad. Robert Stern Stern is chair (acting) of the Department of Dermatology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, co-editor of the Archives of Dermatology, and cofounder and co-editor of Medical and Surgical Dermatology. His research focuses on the epidemiology of skin disease, particularly common diseases like psoriasis, adverse cutaneous reactions to drugs, acne, and nonmelanoma skin cancer. He has focused on the evaluation of the side effects of therapy and the economics of medical care, particularly ambulatory care and education. HMS Stays On Top of U.S. News RankingsFor the 11th year in a row, Harvard Medical School topped the U.S. News and World Report ranking of best medical schools in the country. The tally orders the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools on a weighted average of quality measures. Reputation and research activity count most, respectively making up 40 and 30 percent of the total. Student selectivity accounts for 20 percent and faculty resources 10 percent. Harvard University also placed first among education schools and tied for first with Stanford among business schools. U.S. News has ranked graduate schools since 1987 and has done so annually since 1990. |
