TESTING, TESTING To lessen the impact of pandemic-related MCAT cancellations and to make the test available to as many people as possible, the AAMC has temporarily shortened the exam, reducing total “seated” time from 7½ hours to 5¾ hours. The number of scored questions remains the same, but other elements have been scaled back or removed.

Doctors’ high-profile heroism sparks student interest in medical careers

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The COVID-19 pandemic appears to be prompting more U.S. undergraduates to consider — if not actively pursue — careers in medicine. Medical schools across the country are reporting surges in applications. Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, for example, received nearly 9,000 applications for its next class of 190 students — up 13 percent from last year. On May 7, when the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reopened registration for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), a stampede of would-be test takers caused the system to crash. By the end of the day, 78,000 aspiring doctors had signed up to take the exam — 463 percent more the previous one-day record. Although the frenzy was, no doubt, partly attributable to concerns about the availability of slots in a testing season condensed by the pandemic, admission officers speculated that a far bigger factor was heightened interest in medicine. Tutors have noticed a spike, too. MedSchoolCoach reports that demand for its MCAT-prep services jumped 74 percent in April, compared with the same period a year earlier. The increase for May was 113 percent, and, during the first two weeks of June, business was up a dizzying 354 percent. “When COVID hit, I think for the first time in a long time physicians were kind of seen in the spotlight,” Sahil Mehta, MD, founder of MedSchoolCoach, told the Boston Herald. Undergraduates apparently like what they’ve seen. “You just see all these doctors out there — no matter what their specialty is — helping people," Mary Gracy Kelley, 23, who is seeking a career in sports medicine, told the paper. “It really lit the flame inside me.” READ MORE

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For now, volunteer hours take a back seat to other factors in admission COVID-19 has affected virtually every aspect of academic medicine, so it was probably inevitable that U.S. medical schools would adjust their expectations concerning applicants’ volunteer experience. The American Medical Association (AMA) reports that program admission officers are likely, by necessity, to put less weight on the number of volunteer hours amassed by potential matriculants. The reason is obvious:

The pandemic has all but eliminated undergraduates’ traditional service opportunities, such as volunteering in a hospital or clinic. “I think it’s the consensus with my colleagues across the spectrum of med schools that we’ve all come to an understanding that this cycle is going to be limited in terms of expectations based upon what would be the normal volunteer activities,” John D. Schriner, PhD, associate dean for admissions and student affairs at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, said in an interview with the AMA’s Brendan Murphy. Just because admission officers won’t be demanding,

Wharton, Meharry Medical College announce joint MD/PhD program The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s leading business schools, and Meharry Medical College, a historically black institution in Nashville, Tennessee, have announced a joint MD/PhD program. Meharry students selected for the program, which is set to launch in fall 2021, will earn a medical degree from Meharry and a doctorate in healthcare management from Wharton. After a couple of years in Meharry’s medical program, participants will take a leave of absence to complete their PhD requirements on Wharton’s campus in Philadelphia. They will then return to Meharry to wrap up their MD studies. One Meharry student will be selected to take part each year — a significant commitment inasmuch as Wharton’s healthcare management program accepts only three doctoral students annually, program director Guy David, PhD, told The Daily Pennsylvanian. David said the new venture is a “logical next step” for Wharton and Meharry. Since 2012, Meharry has sent students to Wharton’s Summer Undergraduates Minority Research Program. “Fostering a more diverse healthcare arena has been Meharry Medical College’s goal since our founding,” said A. Dexter Samuels, PhD, Meharry’s senior vice president for student affairs and executive director of the college’s Center for Health Policy. “This agreement is another example of our combined efforts to change the landscape of the healthcare workforce.”

John Schriner say, 100 hours of service doesn’t mean, however, that volunteerism is off the table. “We’re going to hopefully still see a bit of a track record of service and volunteer work and clinical

exposure and students not waiting until the last minute to engage in that activity,” Schriner said, noting that most undergraduates would have had time to build a record of community service before the emergence of COVID-19. What’s more, even now, service opportunities do exist — some of them, ironically, created by the outbreak. Students have, among other things, staffed community-service hotlines, sorted contributions to food banks, and cared for the children of beleaguered clinicians. READ MORE

Each year, starting in fall 2021, one of the three slots in Wharton’s healthcare management doctoral program will be reserved for a student from Meharry Medical College. Applications for the joint-degree program are now being accepted.

Meharry Medical College University of Pennsylvania

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Feds back down, ending dispute over visa guidelines — at least for now In the face of opposition from hundreds of universities, not to mention 17 states and the District of Columbia, the Trump administration rescinded guidelines that could have interrupted the college careers of tens of thousands of international students enrolled in U.S. institutions. The dispute erupted July 6 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that foreign nationals had to take in-person classes to keep their visas, even though many universities are offering only online instruction this fall because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A lawsuit filed initially by Harvard University and MIT, both of which plan mostly online classes, called the requirement “senseless and cruel.” Numerous groups, including the American Medical Association (AMA), lobbied against the ICE guidelines. “If an academic institution determines that it is in the best interest of the safety of its faculty and students to offer online-only courses in the fall of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, then students on F-1 visas should not be penalized and subsequently deported based on a health and safety decision that a university makes,” AMA CEO James L. Madara, MD, wrote in a letter to the agency. The White House previously ordered a temporary halt of the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, which many academic institutions use to hire faculty in high-demand STEM disciplines. The suspension remains in effect. Although that order exempted doctors who will be treating COVID-19 patients, the nonprofit news organization ProPublica found that many American consulates around the world have been slow to issue work visas, thereby preventing hundreds of newly minted foreign physicians from starting their U.S. residencies on time. READ MORE

Although the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and Seton Hall University have ended their formal partnership, Dean Bonita Stanton (right) says students and faculty from the two institutions will continue to work side by side on the medical school’s campus (above) in northern New Jersey.

Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine

Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine formally cuts ties to Seton Hall Seton Hall University and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine have parted company. “There was a significant change in leadership at Seton Hall, and they had a very different idea of financial stability," said Bonita Stanton, MD, founding dean of the school, formerly known as the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall. The partnership, forged in 2015, had been strained for some time. In 2018, the same year the medical school opened, budgetary woes at Seton Hall forced Hackensack to assume full responsibility for the school’s finances and, later, for its accreditation. “We thank Seton Hall for their assistance in getting our start, and we will find ways to work together heading forward,” Stanton told the news website NorthJersey.com. She noted that students in Seton Hall's nursing and Interprofessional Health Science programs will continue to attend classes on the medical school’s Nutley, New Jersey, campus, formerly occupied by pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche. READ MORE

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Gary Cox, JD, has been named associate dean for public health practice and community partnerships in the University of Oklahoma’s Hudson College of Public Health. He also will be a clinical professor in the College of Medicine. Cox led the health departments in Oklahoma City and Tulsa for a total of 25 years.

Mary S. Croughan, PhD, has been named provost and executive vice chancellor at the University of California-Davis. Although she most recently was a professor in the School of Public Health at UNLV, Croughan spent the bulk of her career in the UC system. From 1987 to 2010, she taught epidemiology and biostatistics at the UC-San Francisco School of Medicine. She later served as executive director of the system’s Research Grants Program Office.

Sheila Crow, PhD, has been named to a new post at the University of Oklahoma (OU) College of Medicine: associate dean of faculty affairs and professional development. After joining OU as a research assistant in 1989, Crow held a wide variety of administrative posts at the university. In 2017, she became a consultant for the University of Miami, the California University of Science and Medicine, and the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Richard Doolittle, PhD, has been named interim dean of the College of Health Sciences and Technology at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He has served as vice dean for nearly a decade. Doolittle, who joined RIT’s biological sciences faculty in 1986, has held several administrative posts, including assistant provost for undergraduate education, head of the School of Life Sciences, and head of the Medical Sciences Department.

Lukoye Atwoli, MD, PhD, has been appointed dean of the Medical College at Aga Khan University in Nairobi, Kenya. He will move into his new role August 1. Atwoli, a visiting scientist at Harvard University's T. H. Chan School of Public Health, formerly served as dean of the Moi University School of Medicine in Eldoret, Kenya. The psychiatrist is a member of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Surveys Consortium.

Jill M. Baren, MD, MBA, has been named provost and vice president of academic affairs at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Baren is currently a professor of emergency medicine, pediatrics, and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. She is also president of the American Board of Emergency Medicine. Baren maintains a clinical practice at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Bruce Barnhart, EdD, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, at California University of Pennsylvania, retired earlier this month. Barnhart, a biologist and physical therapist by training, spent 36 years at the school — as a faculty member and administrator. He taught in the university’s athletic-training and physical-therapy programs for 24 years before transitioning to an administrative post in 2008.

Kirk A. Calhoun, MD, president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler (UTHSCT), will become president of the combined institution of UTHSCT and the University of Texas at Tyler (UT Tyler). Under a realignment announced by the University of Texas System, UTHSCT will become an administrative unit within UT Tyler. Before joining UTHSCT in 2002, Calhoun was senior vice president and medical director at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.

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Michael V. Drake, MD, has been name president of the University of California (UC), a statewide system that encompasses 10 campuses, five medical centers, and three nationally affiliated labs. Drake, an ophthalmologist by training, most recently served as president of the Ohio State University. Before assuming that role in 2014, he spent nine years as chancellor of UC-Irvine and five years as UC’s systemwide vice president for health affairs.

Mariana Figueiro, PhD, a professor of biological sciences and architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, will join Rutgers University as director of the new Center for Healthy Aging at the Institute for Health and chief of the new Division of Sleep and Circadian Medicine in Rutgers’ Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Figueiro, a widely recognized researcher in the field of lighting and health, will assume her new roles September 1.

Wayne A. I. Frederick, MD, MBA, president of Howard University and a surgical oncologist, has been chosen by the university’s Board of Trustees to be the Charles R. Drew Endowed Chair of Surgery. Frederick is the second person to hold the chair, succeeding the late LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., MD, the chair was established in the early 1990s as a memorial to a surgeon and Howard administrator who died in a car crash in 1950.

Adam Godzik, PhD, a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of California-Riverside School of Medicine, has been named the Bruce D. and Nancy B. Varner Presidential Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at the university. Before joining UC-Riverside in 2018, the physicist-turned-cancer researcher was affiliated with the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, which conducts biological research benefitting human health.

Gregory Hand, PhD, MPH, founding dean of West Virginia University’s School of Public Health, has been named dean of the College of Health Professions at Wichita State University, effective September 7. Hand, an epidemiologist and the author of more than 100 journal articles and book chapters, was formerly associate dean for research, practice, and information technology at the University of South Carolina’s School of Public Health.

Katherine M. Hiller, MD, MPH, has been named associate dean and director of the Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine-Bloomington. Hiller has served as director for undergraduate emergency medicine for the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson for more than a decade. At IU, in addition to her administrative role, Hiller will maintain a clinical practice in emergency medicine at IU Health Bloomington Hospital.

Cheryl L. Holder, MD, has been named interim associate dean of diversity, equity, inclusivity, and community initiatives at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine (HWCOM) at Florida International University. Holder is an associate professor in the Green Family Foundation Neighborhood HELP program. She began her medical career in 1987 as a National Health Service Corps Scholar working with medically underserved communities in Miami.

Kathleen Jagger, PhD, MPH, has been appointed president of Newman University in Wichita, Kansas. Jagger most recently served as acting president at Thomas More University in Kentucky, where she previously held various administrative posts. From 1996 to 2002, Jagger was a professor of microbiology and public health at Indiana’s DePauw University, After that, she was a professor of biology at Kentucky’s Transylvania University.

Jan Jones-Schenk, DHSc, RN, has been named senior vice president of Western Governors University (WGU) and executive dean of its College of Health Professions. She will oversee all strategic, operational, and academic initiatives for the college, which has nearly 30,000 enrolled students and 70,000 graduates. After joining WGU in 2008, Jones-Schenk led the university’s development and launch of the nation’s first competency-based prelicensure nursing program.

Lia Logio, MD, the June F. Klinghoffer Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at Drexel University’s College of Medicine, has been named vice dean for medical education at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine and director of the Center for Medical Education. Before joining Drexel, Logio led the internal medicine residency programs at the Indiana University School of Medicine and at the Weill Cornell Medical College.

Daniel G. Maluf, MD, has been named director of the transplantation program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (USOM) and the University of Maryland Medical Center. Maluf is currently director of liver transplantation and medical director of the Transplant Research Institute at the University of Tennessee/Methodist Transplant Institute. He previously held similar positions at the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Valeria Raquel Mas, PhD, has been appointed head of the newly created Division of Surgical Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (USOM). She currently serves as director of transplant research at the University of Tennessee/Methodist Transplant Institute in Memphis. Mas founded the institute in 2018. Before that, she directed the Translational Genomics Transplant Laboratory at the University of Virginia.

Mary D. Nettleman, MD, vice president of health affairs at the University of South Dakota (USD) and dean of the Sanford School of Medicine, will retire at the end of August. Before joining USD in 2012, Nettleman served as the chair of the Department of Medicine at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine. She previously was an associate dean at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty member at the University of Iowa.

Lucia Notterpek, PhD, has been named associate dean for biomedical research and professor of physiology and cell biology in the School of Medicine at the University of Nevada, Reno. Notterpek has spent the past 21 years at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where, in 2009, she became the university’s first female chair of neuroscience. She currently serves as president of the Association of Medical School Neuroscience Department Chairpersons.

Rachel Ogden, PharmD, has been named dean of the School of Pharmacy at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM). She will oversee all academic matters related to the LECOM pharmacy program, which encompasses operations at campuses in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Bradenton, Florida, as well as online offerings. Ogden joined LECOM’s faculty in 2008 and became associate dean of the School of Pharmacy in 2011.

Mary Pedersen, PhD, has been named provost and executive vice president at Colorado State University, effective August 1. She has spent the past year as interim provost at California Polytechnic State University. Before that, she was the school’s senior vice provost. Pedersen joined Cal Poly as an associate professor specializing in medical nutrition therapy. The biologist later became chair of the university's Food Science and Nutrition Program.

William Pieratt, DO, has been named dean and chief academic officer of the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He will assume his new responsibilities September 1. Pieratt, an internist, is currently an associate dean at the Texas A&M College of Medicine in Bryan. He is also interim chair of the Department of Primary Care and Population Health, as well as medical director of the A&M Integrated Medicine (AIM) Program.

Roberto Pili, MD, has been named chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and associate dean for cancer research in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. He also will teach in the School of Public Health and Health Professions. Pili spent the past five years at Indiana University, where he was the Robert Wallace Miller Professor of Oncology and co-leader of the Experimental and Developmental Therapeutics Program.

Gregory Postel, MD, has been named special advisor to the University of Toledo (UT) Board of Trustees. He will be elevated to interim president when President Sharon L. Gaber leaves UT to become chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Postel, an interventional neuroradiologist, spent the bulk of his career at the University of Louisville, where he held a variety of leadership positions, including executive vice president for health affairs.

Andrea Reid, MD, MPH, has been appointed associate dean for student and multicultural affairs in the Program in Medical Education at Harvard Medical School, her alma mater. She also will serve as director of the school’s Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs and as director of diversity and faculty development for Massachusetts General Hospital’s Division of Gastroenterology. Reid most recently practiced at the VA Medical Center in Washington, DC.

Tim Ridgway, MD, has been named vice president of health affairs at the University of South Dakota and dean of the Sanford School of Medicine, effective September 1. Ridgway, a graduate of Sanford, is currently director of gastrointestinal endoscopy at the Royal C. Johnson VA Hospital in Sioux Falls. During a previous tenure with Sanford, he served as executive dean, dean of faculty affairs, and professor in the Department of Internal Medicine.

Jack D. Sobel, MD, distinguished professor of Internal Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine in Detroit, has been awarded the title of dean emeritus. Sobel was the school’s dean from 2014 until this past April, when he stepped down to return to research and patient care. Sobel, who joined Wayne State’s faculty in 1985, also served as the university’s interim vice president for health affairs.

Joann Sweasy, PhD, has been named director of the University of Arizona (UA) Cancer Center and inaugural holder of the Nancy C. and Craig M. Berge Endowed Chair. She had been interim director for nine months. Sweasy, a microbiologist specializing in DNA repair and genomic instability, joined the Cancer Center in June 2019 as associate director for basic sciences. She is a member of the faculty at the UA College of Medicine–Tucson.

Tommy Thompson, JD, who served four terms as Wisconsin's governor before stepping down to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush, has been named interim president of the University of Wisconsin System, which encompasses 26 campuses. Thompson, who assumed the post July 1, will serve for atleast a year. His appointment followed a search in which the lone finalist dropped out.

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Medical University of South Carolina

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the life-altering restrictions it necessitated, colleges and universities from coast to coast found novel ways to recognize the achievements of their newest graduates.The Medical University of South Carolina, for example, organized a drive-through commencement (above) — complete with an anything-but-solemn motorized procession.

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