Fall has arrived and with it many great seasonal activities! I hope you will all be able to enjoy some of your favorite ones.
September is the month we recognize women in medicine. Dr. Phil Bierman (emeritus professor) and Dr. Elizabeth Reed have captured the history of a couple of the early women faculty in our own department. You can find out more about these amazing women from the link in the newsletter. Thank you to all our women physicians and providers who contribute so much to the department daily. September 15 was also the start of Hispanic Heritage month and you can find out more about campus activities in the DEI section of the newsletter. We are grateful for our faculty, trainees, and staff with Hispanic heritage who enrich our department.
In August, we lost a senior statesman of our department. Dr. Robert Wigton, a former division chief of the General Internal Medicine division and a former Associate Dean of Graduate Medical Education for the COM passed away. Dr. Wigton shaped the division, department and College of Medicine in so many ways and captured our history as well. In recent years, he generously helped create the Wigton Heritage Center in Wittson Hall. Dr. Wigton’s memorial service will be on October 17 in the Wigton Heritage Center (but with limited in-person attendance) at 11 am. There will be access virtually so reach out to me if you have difficulty finding that connection.
We recently published the department’s biennial report and I want to make sure you all have access to it. Many thanks to Shannon Thomsen who led the construction of the report and to all the division representatives who contributed. This is a great resource for sharing with visitors including prospective faculty, trainees and staff. As I said in my Letter from the Chair in the report, it is amazing to see so much forward momentum despite formidable challenges!
In case you missed it, the GI division celebrated the official opening of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center. It is a great physical space for our IBD patients and will enhance clinical research. The center is named for Dr. Frederick Paustian who was instrumental in creating our GI division years ago and recruited Dr. Michael Sorrell who grew the division, went on to be Chair of the department, and who spearheaded the effort to create the IBD Center. Bill and Ruth Scott were generous benefactors of this program, and we are very grateful to them. We are fortunate that we recruited Dr. Peter Mannon to be the director of the center as well as the GI division chief. Many of our faculty, especially Dr. Rene Young (now retired), built up the IBD patient population and now Drs. Mannon, Eichele, Hutchins and Sivaraman are making the Center a reality.
There are lots of items to check out in the newsletter. We welcome Maria Daniels to her new role as communications specialist for the department. She will be coordinating the newsletter and much more in terms of web pages, social media, and more (see info in the newsletter). Thanks to Shannon Thomsen and Toni Goeser who have previously organized our newsletter.
The department meetings in October and November will be an overview of department activities in two parts. Hope you can join us on the third Thursday of the month at 5 pm by zoom.
Again, enjoy the fall and thank you to all for what you do for the department!