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Field for health VP post narrows to 6
Candidates described as "highly respected and accomplished scholars"
By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
The field of candidates for the position of vice president for health sciences has been whittled to five finalists, with a sixth still considering an invitation, as the Reporter went to press, to come to campus to meet with faculty, administrators, students and others in the Buffalo-Niagara health-care community.
The candidates are Glenn Davis, dean of the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University; S. Bruce Dowton, former dean of the School of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Australia; David Dunn, chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Minnesota; Florence Haseltine, director of the Center for Population Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health; and J. Randolph Hillard, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
Kenneth Blumenthal, professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and chair of the Vice President for Health Sciences Search Committee, declined to name the sixth candidate until he/she decides to come to campus, but said the "extremely well-qualified" candidate is a distinguished clinician and scientist, and a member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine.
All six candidates "are highly respected and accomplished scholars in the respective academic disciplines," Blumenthal noted, adding that all have had "successful leadership experience at prestigious medical schools."
In addition, they all "share a vision for the future of health sciences at UB consistent with the goals articulated by the university and local health-care community at the inception of the search," he said.
Each candidate will spend two days at UB, meeting with faculty, staff, students, deans, UB Council members and selected community partners and individuals.
The meetings are expected "to provide an opportunity for the candidates to gain a greater sense of the strengths and potential of health sciences at UB, while simultaneously providing an opportunity for the campus community to get to know the candidates beyond what might be gleaned from a review of their respective curriculum vitae," Blumenthal said.
Members of the campus community are invited to attend open sessions with the applicants. The dates, times and locations for the sessions are as follows:
Glenn Davis, 1:45-2:30 p.m., Monday (March 28), 325B Squire Hall, South Campus.
David Dunn, 2:15-3 p.m., April 4, 325B Squire.
Florence Haseltine, 1-1:45 p.m., April 7, Lippshutz Room, 125 Biomedical Education Building, South Campus.
S. Bruce Dowton, 1-1:45 p.m., April 12, Lippshutz Room.
J. Randolph Hillard, 1:30-2:15 p.m., April 14, 280 Park Hall, North Campus.
The curricula vitae for the candidates are available at http://www.buffalo.edu /vphssearch/.
The search committee has been working since November to identify and recruit prospective candidates. Advertisements were placed in national journals, and nominations were solicited from contacts throughout the national and international biomedical sciences and health-care communities, Blumenthal said.
The result was a pool of about 50 candidates. Members of the search committee, as well as President John B. Simpson; Provost Satish K. Tripathi, executive vice president for academic affairs; and James A. (Beau) Willis, chief of staff in the Office of the President, conducted preliminary interviews off campus last month with 13 "extremely well-qualified individuals," he said.
Based on the interviews, reference checking and consultation among search committee members and Simpson, Tripathi and Willis, the pool was further narrowed to the six finalists, he added.