You’ll see in this newsletter that 13 new faculty have joined our ranks this month. In a previous edition of InterCOM, we reported that another 50 new faculty had joined the college.
No doubt, much of this growth is due to the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, which is slated to open next spring. The cancer center is projecting that 150 new positions for clinical and research faculty will need to be filled. In addition, approximately 1,050 new positions for clinical and research staff are expected to be created.
Those are impressive numbers that should also result in a substantial direct economic impact to our city and state. Furthermore, for each $1 million in federal funding brought in by our researchers, it is estimated that it creates and sustains more than 30 local jobs.
The influx of clinical and academic talent is impressive. The new recruits hail from such prestigious institutions as Harvard, Stanford, Vanderbilt and Duke. Physician faculty have completed residency or fellowship training at MD Anderson, Mount Sinai and Yale.
Although much of our college’s growth has been in response to the planned expansion of the cancer center, what perhaps has been lost somewhat is that we also are undergoing strategic growth in many other areas unrelated to the cancer center.
Some of the areas that are expanding include trauma surgery, critical care, anesthesiology, infectious diseases, pathology/microbiology, pediatrics, radiation oncology, general surgery, primary care, neurology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, and our hospitalist program.
Dr. Sam Bierner, our new director of the physical medicine and rehabilitation program, has already recruited four new physicians for his program with a number of others in active recruitment. In addition, we will soon launch the search for a chair and then faculty for our new department of dermatology that also will increase our numbers. Furthermore, the arrival of a new division director for the division of cardiology is expected to lead to a growth in that area.
I think it’s fair to say UNMC and Nebraska Medicine are on a roll. The community and alumni support for our programs has been absolutely amazing. They want us to be a world-class academic medical center, and we are doing our absolute best to make that a reality.
Continual growth and program development are a given as those institutions with whom we are compared are not standing still either. New knowledge and developments in patient care never stop. Academic medicine centers like ours must constantly be moving forward and investing in the future to remain at the forefront. The faculty who are joining us now and in the future will be critical to make our visions and goals a reality.
Speaking of alumni, on Oct. 7-8, UNMC will welcome many of our alumni back to campus as part of Alumni Reunion Weekend. Some of these alums will be seeing the campus for the first time since they graduated and for others at least many years will have passed since they were last here.
We think they’ll be impressed by what they see. I’m guessing that many of them won’t even recognize their alma mater.
I encourage you all to greet these alums and make them feel welcome. They are vital ambassadors for UNMC and a testament to what a UNMC education is all about.