Bernardino retools med school offices, staff

Persons who thought they had mastered the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the medical school's Cary-Farber-Sherman complex will need to draw a new mental map this semester.

Michael Bernardino's arrival as vice president for health affairs, with responsibility for overseeing the university's health-sciences schools and revamping the medical school's clinical practice plan, set in motion a series of office and departmental relocations.

A new abbreviation also has been added to the campus lexicon -BEB - which refers to the Biomedical Education Building, known since its construction in 1982 as the CFS addition. The Biomedical Education Building is not to be confused with the Biomedical Research Building, the South Campus's newest structure, which was completed in 1996.

The following is a summary of significant changes. All moves are expected to be completed by the end of the third week in January.

Vice President's Wing

The first floor of the south wing of the Biomedical Education Building, formerly housing Dean John Wright and the medical school support staff, is being transformed into the vice president's wing. This suite of offices will house Bernardino and his secretary, along with the staff of the newly formed UB Associates, the medical service organization that will provide centralized accounting, management and legal services for the clinical practice plan.

The assistant vice president and general counsel, the assistant vice president for resource management (for health affairs), the chief operating officer for the practice plan and the medical compliance officer for the practice plan also will be located here.

Dean's Wing

Wright and his staff will move into the first floor of the BEB's north wing above the atrium, in an area formerly occupied by student study carrels and the medical admissions office. The study area is now located on the third floor of Farber Hall, while medical admissions moved downstairs to the ground floor, into the former student locker area. Student lockers were decentralized throughout the building.

Bruce Holm, associate dean for research and graduate studies, and his staff will move into offices across the hall from Wright's suite, in renovated space used formerly as a staff lounge and small conference room. The Lippshutz Conference Room occupies the remaining space in this wing.

Medical school development and alumni affairs offices, formerly located on the BEB's first floor in what is now the vice president's suite, will be located on the first floor of Cary Hall.

Relocation of Communicative Disorders and Sciences

The Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences (CDS) moved from Park Hall to the South Campus in late December, although it remains aligned academically with the College of Arts and Sciences. The move unites the department's various components on one campus: Its Center for Hearing and Deafness, a UB Center of Excellence that concentrates on basic research into the neurobiological and environmental causes of deafness, has been located in Parker Hall on the South Campus since 1987.

CDS faculty offices now are located on the first floor of Cary Hall, in space formerly occupied by the Department of Biophysics, which merged with the Department of Physiology in 1997. That combined department is headquartered in Sherman Hall.

The Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic now occupies the ground floor of the BEB, which formerly housed the University Physicians Office. The Center for Hearing and Deafness will remain in Parker Hall.

Standardized Patient Center

In 1998, UB medical school was designated a regional center for testing medical students in basic clinical skills, medical-history taking and patient interaction, using standardized patients. To accommodate this new function, the school renovated space on the second floor of Cary Hall into a Standardized Patient Center, which contains examination rooms equipped with video cameras to record student performance and observation rooms for faculty monitors.

Standardized patients are persons trained to simulate actual patients for use in medical education.