From the editor

SECOND OPINION
BY SIDNEY HARRIS

Dennis Spencer has been named the interim dean of the School of Medicine.

Above and beyond the call at Commencement

On behalf of my family and myself, I want to express my gratitude to the entire staff who organized, reorganized and ran the Commencement ceremonies. Though I wasn’t there beforehand to witness the Herculean effort, my father was—and he reported that everyone worked like Trojans to preserve the celebration of the day. I don’t think I’m capable of expressing how important that was to my family, and how it left them with a sense that this school—the entire school—has an unusual and strong sense of community. I’m proud to have been a part of it, and overjoyed to remain one.

The most exciting, emotional and meaningful moment of the day occurred as I and my classmates took our short walk from the I-wing of Sterling Hall of Medicine into the graduation tent. We were a little depressed as we stood dripping onto the floor of Sterling. Someone near me mentioned that we looked like a funeral procession as we shuffled silently toward the exit. As we neared the door I saw staff members standing side by side, holding umbrellas for us. I was overwhelmed by the abrupt contrast between my momentary depression and the emotions that resulted from the cheers emanating from the tent and the stage. The applause didn’t even threaten to lull, let alone pause or stop.

To the staff who made it all happen, I thank you for everything you did for our class to make the best of a difficult day. And I thank you, in particular, for helping my own family. We appreciate it deeply.

Maxwell S. Laurans, M.D. ’03
New Haven

As we went to press, the kudos were flying

Each spring the National Academy of Sciences elects new members, bestowing one of the highest honors a U.S. scientist or engineer can receive. As this issue of the magazine was in production, we learned that three Yale scientists had been tapped for membership: medical school faculty members Linda M. Bartoshuk, Ph.D., and Arthur L. Horwich, M.D., HS ’78, FW ’84, and alumnus John D. Baxter, M.D. ’66, HS ’68, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Bartoshuk, a professor of surgery in the section of otolaryngology and of psychology, is an experimental psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of taste. Horwich, professor of genetics and pediatrics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has solved key problems in the study of protein folding, work that has clear implications for Alzheimer’s disease.

Baxter is director of UCSF’s Metabolic Research Unit. In 1979, he and Howard M. Goodman, Ph.D., were the first to clone the gene for human growth hormone, which became the second genetically engineered product to receive government approval. His current work focuses on how receptors in the nucleus of a cell affect human health and disease. His term as president of The Endocrine Society ended in June.

Other Yale alumni elected this spring were George A. Akerlof, B.A. ’62; James H. Dieterich, Ph.D. ’68; John B. Fenn, Ph.D. ’40 (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry); and Paul A. Wender, Ph.D. ’73. Sixty-nine Yale professors are among the society’s 1,850 active members.

On another front, judges in the CASE Circle of Excellence competition have selected Yale Medicine to receive a silver medal in the Special Interest Magazines category at the case International Assembly in July in Washington. Yale Medicine was awarded a silver medal last year as well by CASE, the 23,500-member Council for Advancement and Support of Education, and received the highest honor in the 2001 magazine competition sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges.

—The Editors

From the Editor:

This just in

One of the dubious pleasures of editing a magazine is taking an issue that is ready to go to print and remaking it because news has broken. The pleasure is doubtful because once an article, a headline or a layout is complete in the eyes of the person who created it, there is an almost irresistible force that seems to say, “Don’t change a thing.”

But change was the modus operandi at the School of Medicine during May and June this year. The largest building ever constructed on the medical campus was dedicated in May, and news followed soon after that benefactors A. John Anlyan, B.S. ’42, M.D. ’45, and Betty Jane Anlyan had increased their gift to Yale so significantly that the entire 457,000-square-foot complex would be named in their honor. What had been a two-page follow-up to our Winter 2003 article, “The Big Move,” became this issue’s cover story (“A New Space for Science”). We added four pages to the issue to accommodate more photos and to show the progression of the building’s construction over the past three years.

Then on June 23 came another news flash, that Dean David A. Kessler, M.D., had accepted an offer from the University of California, San Francisco, to become vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the UCSF School of Medicine. Appointed in 1997, Kessler presided over the medical school during a period of major change, an era capped by the opening of The Anlyan Center. Even bigger challenges await him in San Francisco, where UCSF has begun building a phased, 43-acre life sciences campus in the city’s Mission Bay district. We wish him well.

Yale President Richard C. Levin has appointed Dennis D. Spencer, M.D., HS ’77, as interim dean effective July 1 pending a search for a permanent successor. Spencer, who figures prominently in one of this issue’s feature stories (“High Resolution”) and was profiled in the Fall 1998 issue of Yale Medicine, is the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery. We’ll follow up on this story with an interview with the new interim dean in our Autumn issue. Meanwhile, rest assured that even during the hazy, lazy days of summer, there is never a dull moment on Cedar Street.

Michael Fitzsousa
michael.fitzsousa@yale.edu