Faculty members share UNMC memories

A total of 140 faculty members, celebrating service milestones of either 40, 30, 20, 10 or five years, will be recognized during the Annual Faculty Meeting on April 24 at 4 p.m. in the Durham Research Center Auditorium.

Below, three 30-year colleagues share their favorite UNMC memories.
30 years

Elizabeth Reed, M.D.	Jonathan Vennerstrom, Ph.D.

Elizabeth Reed, M.D., professor of hematology-oncology, College of Medicine
“I have many wonderful memories of the friendships I have with colleagues, trainees, staff and patients at UNMC. I had the most fun at UNMC as an intern. My most rewarding experiences have been in participating in the design of the Lied Transplant Center and the Village Pointe Cancer Center as well as being on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Breast Cancer Guideline Committee for 29 years.”

Joe Sisson, M.D., chief of pulmonary, critical care, sleep and allergy, College of Medicine

Joe Sisson, M.D.

One of my most rewarding experiences at UNMC was meeting in 1995 with Dr. Todd Wyatt. From the beginning of our 20-year research partnership in 1997, almost everything we tried to do in the lab worked, which was a combination of our complementary perspectives of clinician and scientist, timing (better NIH budgets than now) and more than a bit of luck. We have co-published more than 60 papers, presented our findings all over the world (France, Denmark, Austria, Japan, Germany, Australia), co-trained nine post-doctoral research fellows and dozens of students, and had a real blast working together. Research partners and good friends like Todd are rare and have made a huge difference in bringing fun and joy to the otherwise hard work of good science.

Jonathan Vennerstrom, Ph.D., professor, College of Pharmacy
UNMC has been a great place to be for the last 30 years. I have been blessed with so many good colleagues and friends here. Even though the College of Pharmacy is small, we get along well, we don’t take ourselves too seriously and we enjoy working together. Chancellor Maurer even built an ice rink right outside the backdoor of the College of Pharmacy; there are not many places where you can lace up your ice skates and walk down the hall to the ice rink for a mid-day workout!