One of the great things about working at UNMC is that there is always something happening.
As I look out my window on the fourth floor of the Sorrell Center, I’m delighted to see that the renovation of Poynter Hall is almost completed.
Later this month, the Department of Psychiatry will move into the building and have a full-time presence on campus for the first time since 1999. For the past 13 years, the department has been located in the old Lutheran Hospital building near 25th and Leavenworth streets.
Patients will be seen in the renovated building beginning Oct. 19. A campus open house will be held on Nov. 9.
Psychiatry is an important area of medicine with many ties to other medical fields. It will be great to have the department back on campus, and I have no doubt that it will lead to much more collaboration between departments.
If I walk down the end of the fourth floor, I can see the Stanley M. Truhlsen Eye Institute taking shape. This will be the new home of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences.
The building is expected to be completed in early 2013 with a grand opening likely to be held sometime in the spring.
In the next decade as the population ages, it is estimated that age-related eye diseases will increase by 30 percent in the United States. Thus, there will be a growing need for state-of-the-art ophthalmology care at UNMC.
The Truhlsen Eye Institute will allow UNMC to take eye care to a whole new level in Nebraska. It will enable the department to double its clinical faculty, add new residency and fellowship slots, step up its research, and provide a variety of new services and treatments for children and adults.
Finally, as I am sure by now you are aware, Chancellor Harold M. Maurer announced last month that he will be changing roles with the university. Starting July 1, he will become a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and chancellor emeritus. He will devote much of his time to a new position working at the University of Nebraska Foundation, spearheading fund raising for the Cancer Center Campus.
For nearly 20 years, Chancellor Maurer has been the personification of UNMC. His message was always clear. Once a need or goal was identified, it wasn’t a question of “if” it could be done, but rather “how” we will get it done.
I was honored to have been selected by Dr. Maurer to become dean of the College of Medicine a little more than a year ago. In the short time I’ve been here, I have learned much from him about leadership, vision, and how to achieve goals.
Although he will be moving on to a new position at UNMC, for those of us who have been privileged to be part of his tenure at UNMC, he will always be “The Chancellor.”