Guest columnist
About a month before I officially started at Duke in 2007, I came for a reception celebrating the announcement of my appointment as dean of the School of Medicine. I met so many wonderful people and was so moved by the warmth of the welcome and how much interest there was in the new dean coming in.
My job began in earnest in October, so when I arrived I was struck not only by the beauty of the fall campus, but by the tremendous loyalty of the alumni that were returning for their annual visits. It's evident when I meet them on campus as well as all over the country how much Duke alumni value their memories of this place. As I put down my own roots here, I'm coming to understand why.
Duke's excellent reputation was clear to me from the first, but what's most impressive is seeing how strong the intellectual drive is here. That's especially evident in how vigorously the medical school interacts with the rest of the university. This collaborative spirit is a big advantage, one that truly sets Duke apart from its peers. Other top medical schools are both geographically and culturally distant from the rest of their universities, whereas we have cultivated collaborations with every other school on campus. These unique pairings allow us to think about medical problems from a different perspective.
Becoming the first female dean of a top medical school is not something I recall thinking or talking about much about before the offer, though there was a lot of media attention afterward. It's not a major part of how I identify myself. Day to day on campus, the issue of my gender doesn't really play out, though when I go to clinical department chair meetings, I'm often the only woman in the room -- but I've been in that position many times over the years; I'm used to it.
It gets more attention on the outside. My duties require a good bit of travel, and most places I go, someone will inevitably bring up how unusual it is to have a female dean or ask me to give advice to women faculty or students. I think my generation of women in medicine has, unfortunately in some ways, seen a lot of firsts. Academic medicine has lagged behind other fields in taking advantage of what women have to offer.
If my being the first female dean in any way heightens Duke's profile and boosts my ability to help the medical school achieve its objectives, then so much the better. Similar to our peers, we're experiencing an unprecedented time in the history of academic medicine as a result of severe economic stress. In tough times, something's got to give, and our faculty worry that promoting our clinical activities may come at the expense of their academic pursuits. We can't lose sight of the fact that this institution built its reputation on its academic foundations. I'm looking forward to being in a position to energetically develop new initiatives in the future, but my most important job right now is to preserve what makes Duke special, to steer us through hard times so that we emerge a strong academic institution, not merely a strong health system.
Luckily, Duke has a great advantage in that it is driven by a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurialism. This has always been a place where big things happen. When someone here has a compelling idea that may yield an answer to a scientific question or a treatment for a disease, they're able to fully leverage their resources to get there. The people at Duke are modern-day alchemists; they really know how to create intellectual gold from their ideas.
Duke also has a strong core value of being of service to society, which is really important, perhaps now more than ever before. We're aggressively thinking about our global role, and reaching out to establish collaborations with academic and industry partners and other countries and governments. Some older medical schools are so big and bureaucratic that starting new initiatives can be like trying to change the direction of the Titanic. Here, doing new things is part of the culture. That combination of creativity, global thinking, and nimbleness is why Duke will not only endure, but prosper.
Nancy Andrews is dean of the Duke University School of Medicine and vice chancellor, academic affairs. More essays
This essay appears in a new book, "The Magic of Medicine at Duke -- A History in Our Own Words," compiled by R. Sanders "Sandy" Williams, and is reprinted with permission.
Williams, former dean of the Duke University School of Medicine and currently senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, has just published the collection of more than 50 essays from alumni and faculty at the school.
You can read more essays, and learn more about the book, on the Web at http://www.dukemedicine.org/magic/essays.
