Dear colleague: 

I am writing this message in the lobby of a hotel on a cool, foggy early Sunday morning in Brussels, Belgium, where I arrived less than an hour ago from Denver, where it is midnight. I am not tired yet, but because the hotel is completely booked, it looks like I won’t be taking a nap for a while. Next time, I will make sure the room is reserved for the night before I arrive. I wonder what the state travel rules say about that. I kept my streak alive of always bumping into someone from the campus at an airport. On this trip, it was Mehul Lakhani, director of finance and administration for the Department of Radiology, who was on his way to Chicago for a meeting, and then, while I was doing laps around Concourse C and D at Dulles International Airport awaiting the flight to Brussels, I encountered Spike and Nan Eklund, who were co-chairs for our campus of the recent “Creating Futures” fundraising campaign. They were heading back to Denver after a four-day meeting in Washington, D.C.

In a month of “lasts,” I attended my final faculty senate meeting as dean last Tuesday. I had intended to give the Sen. Robert Byrd award (named after the longest-serving U.S. Senator in history) to the longest-serving senator in the faculty senate, but it turns out there are a couple whose service dates back to the 1990s and who can remember when I became dean – Robert Breeze, MD, professor of neurosurgery, and Curt Freed, MD, professor of medicine. The meeting, as usual, was informative. Bruce Landeck, MD, MS, offered a nice overview of the Department of Pediatrics and how much it has grown over the years. When I left the department to become acting dean in 1990, there were 55 faculty at Colorado General Hospital and 40 at Children’s. The department now has more than 700 faculty. Robert Anderson, MD, senior associate dean for education, also let the senators know that we are heading into the self-review process for a visit in the 2016-2017 academic year by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, our accrediting body. This self-analysis is crucial to our School, so I hope everyone will cooperate with Bob and his team as they help us prepare.

The annual Donor Recognition Dinner was last Thursday evening in the Seawall Ballroom of the Denver Performing Arts Complex. I was at a meeting at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, NJ, so I missed it, but it sounds like it was a wonderful evening. The donors who were honored were Guillermo “Bill” Aragon, MD and his late wife, Maria de Lourdes Aragon, businessman Jake Jabs and the Temple Hoyne Buell Foundation. Bill was a medical resident at the University in 1951 and he later taught surgery to medical students while practicing at Denver General. The Aragons have endowed a chair in surgery. Don Elliman, chancellor of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said it well: “While tonight’s gathering recognizes the support you’ve provided in the past, this is really about the future—and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the University of Colorado Denver and the Anschutz Medical Campus are the future of Denver, Aurora and Colorado ... and for our world.”

Congratulations to the award winners from the fourth annual Postdoctoral Research Day. There are too many recipients to mention them all by name in this email, but we take pride in all who presented. You can find the names of the winners, their mentors and the poster titles in this article on the University’s website. This event has been a great showcase for the outstanding research on our campus and to gives postdoctoral fellows a chance to get out of the lab and meet one another.

“Take Preparedness by Storm,” an event focused on emergency preparedness on our campus, begins at 11 a.m., Wednesday, March 18, in the Krugman Conference Hall. There will be information booths and advice on everything from bike security to tornado drills. The event is open to everyone on campus.

The deadline for medical students to nominate preceptors for the Golden Stethoscope Awards has been extended to Friday, March 27. The winners will be selected through a panel review process and will be announced at the sixth annual Golden Stethoscope Award Banquet on Tuesday, May 5. To nominate a preceptor, students are asked to write a one-page letter of recommendation for one of the nine award categories. Nominations should be emailed to foundations.doctoring@ucdenver.edu. 

Match Day is Friday, March 20, and we will be providing live-streaming on the Internet for friends, family, mentors, colleagues (well, the whole world) to watch as our distinguished soon-to-be graduates in the MD class of 2015 find out where the next chapter of their lives will be. The live online simulcast has become a popular tradition at our Match Day events, allowing our medical students to pop in front of the camera and share the news about where they will be for their residencies. You’ll be able to find a link to the simulcast on the home page of the School of Medicine. The stream will also be available on our special Match Day page.

Finally, John Harney announced last week that he was going to retire at the end of June. He has been a terrific partner for the seven years he has been here. We will miss him.

Have a good week,

"What’s Going On Here" is an email news bulletin from Richard Krugman, MD, Dean of the CU School of Medicine, that is distributed to inform University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty members about issues pertaining to the School’s mission of education, research, clinical care and community service. See the UCH-Insider →

If you would like to receive these emails directly, please contact Cheryl.Welch@ucdenver.edu. 

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