Martin Will Step Down After 10 Years as HMS Dean

Will Use Next Nine Months to Advance Education, Science Planning, and Recruitments

Joseph Martin, dean of the Faculty of Medicine, who for more than nine years has fostered collaboration, interdisciplinary research, diversity, and the highest standards in research, has announced that he will step down from his position in July 2007.

In an e-mail to the Harvard Medical community, Martin said that the next nine months would be used to focus on key priorities, including education reform, science planning, and recruitments. Martin also praised colleagues for the dedication and insight they brought to the many projects that have advanced the community during his tenure.

Photo by Steve Gilbert

Derek Bok (left) and Joseph Martin enjoy one of the student presentations at the outdoor reception for the Quad centennial celebration (see Milestones).

“Joe Martin has served Harvard Medical School and the University with integrity, imagination, and great distinction,” said Derek Bok, interim president of Harvard. “Though I have worked with Joe only briefly, it is clear to me that his successor will inherit a School that is exceptionally strong in terms of medical education, scientific research, and connection to the clinical enterprise.”

Martin became dean of HMS in July 1997, a time of great transition in the Boston health care marketplace, especially for the Harvard-affiliated hospitals. In 1993, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital formed the Partners organization. In 1996, the Beth Israel–Deaconess merger was finalized. These and other consolidations and resulting competition jeopardized the kind of faculty collaborations and interdisciplinary approaches needed to advance medical science through shared ideas and resources.

Martin, a neurologist and neuroscientist by training and the former chief of the neurology service at Massachusetts General Hospital, was recruited to HMS from the University of California, San Francisco, where he served as dean of the medical school and then chancellor of the UCSF system. Martin was known as a bridge builder and champion of interdisciplinary science.

Hospital Collaborations
In his first year as dean, Martin went to work to improve relationships with hospital colleagues. He held two major collaboration retreats, and in these and subsequent retreats, he developed trust and identified common areas of concern and of opportunity. One of his first acts was to create a new system of appointments and promotions, putting new emphasis on the value of teaching as a vehicle to promotion. Working with the University, he then increased the payout on the endowment for the 102 endowed professorships based at the hospitals. Over a five-year period, this added $20 million to the affiliates’ academic budgets to pay for teaching.

“Dr. Martin has been a wonderful leader of the Medical School and a real consensus builder among all of the Harvard-affiliated hospitals,” said James Mandell, president and chief executive officer of Children’s Hospital Boston. “He has been the glue for many of the interinstitutional programs that have made Harvard a national leader in clinical care and research.”

“Joe will leave many lasting legacies,” said James Mongan, president and chief executive officer of Partners HealthCare. “But perhaps his most important legacy will be that he has redefined the relationship between the Medical School and its affiliated hospitals around our shared academic mission.”

Martin also moved quickly to improve diversity, initiating a review of assistant and associate professors that resulted in many well-deserved promotions of women and minorities. Soon after, the Executive Council on Diversity developed a uniform plan to monitor recruitment of minorities in all HMS residency programs. In 2000, Martin and hospital leaders agreed to adopt a more aggressive and collaborative approach for recruiting senior-level minorities to the faculty.

The dean also increased diversity in leadership positions at the School. During his tenure, two female science chairs were appointed, Carla Shatz, head of the Department of Neurobiology, and Joan Brugge, head of the Department of Cell Biology, the School’s largest basic science department. Martin also appointed Nancy Andrews the first dean for basic sciences and graduate studies, and he named Cynthia Walker the first female executive dean for administration. In appointing Joan Reede as dean for diversity and community partnership, he was also naming the first female African-American dean in the history of the University.

Multidisciplinary Research
To nurture a collaborative culture among faculty, the School offered seed grants that paired researchers on the School’s research Quadrangle with colleagues at the hospitals. Important collaborations grew. As early as 1998, the JDF Center for Islet Cell Transplantation at Harvard Medical School was created through a $20 million, five-year grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation that supported more than 30 researchers from across several Harvard institutions.

In 1999, more than 800 faculty across the entire Harvard Medical community were pulled together to create the Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and the National Cancer Institute awarded it a $50 million grant to fund 15 core facilities, creating the largest cancer research enterprise in the country.

Many more collaborations developed. In 2000, the Harvard Clinical Research Institute was launched, a partnership between HMS and Caregroup and Partners HealthCare to create a single gateway for industry-sponsored clinical research. The Harvard Medical School/Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics also opened that year, and in 2001, the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair (HCNR) was created with an anonymous $37.5 million gift. HCNR links more than 700 neuroscientists across all of the affiliated institutions in an effort to find new therapies for disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Martin also looked to the power of computing to link the more than 10,000 Medical School faculty. An electronic bridge was created in December 1999 when a robust intranet, eCommons, was developed to give all faculty quick access to a variety of resources, including the electronic medical and scientific literature at the Countway Library of Medicine. Computing was also used to advance medical education. In 2001, the MyCourses web portal was introduced, allowing students access to an array of course materials.

To improve medical education, Martin also shepherded the first comprehensive review of the HMS MD curriculum in 20 years. Redesigned courses have been launched over the past year and will roll out over the next few years, including changes in the hospital-based clerkships. Martin also helped introduce the combined MD–MBA program that enrolled students for the first time last year.

Martin made remarkable gains in building research facilities that would help foster interdisciplinary and collaborative work. In 2003, the School opened the 525,000-square-foot New Research Building, the largest academic building in the history of the University. The new building helped ease space limitations created by many new programs, including the first entirely new department in more than 20 years, the Department of Systems Biology.

When Martin steps down in July, he will focus his attention on the efforts of the HCNR. President Bok will convene a faculty advisory committee this fall to begin the search process for a new dean, with the expectation that the ultimate selection will be made by the next president of Harvard.

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