Speeches

Dr. Stuart D. Cook
University Day Speech
September 11, 2001

Thank you, Ms. Miranda, and thank you Dr. Paz for graciously agreeing to host this year's University Day. University Day is an occasion to relish the achievements of the past year and to acknowledge the goals and challenges that lie before us. It is a pleasure to be here to share my thoughts with you.

Before enumerating our successes, I would like to mention that earlier today Gubernatorial Candidate Jim McGreevey was at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey to unveil his plan for expanding CINJ to our Newark and Camden County campuses. He also proposed the location of a cancer cluster task force in the UMDNJ School of Public Health.

I would also like to congratulate this year's recipient of the University Medal for Distinguished Leadership-- Brendan Byrne. We are a statewide university due in no small measure to his leadership and we are forever grateful for his friendship.

Congratulations are also in order to our 14 new Master Educators and to this year's recipients of the University Excellence Awards.

Now turning to today's address, let me say that the remarkable strides the University has made over the past 12 months are due to the talents and hard work of many of you here today. By you, I mean Isabel Miranda and the Board of Trustees, our eight deans and the senior administration of the University, our faculty, our students, our staff, our alumni and the Foundation of UMDNJ. But, in particular, I want to acknowledge the key role of the faculty in educating our students, making cutting-edge contributions to science and delivering outstanding health care. I am very proud of their commitment to this institution. In addition, I would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Fred Humphrey, dean of the School of Osteopathic Medicine for the past 15 years, and Dr. Fran Ward, founding dean of the School of Nursing, both of whom have announced they will be stepping down in June 2002. Dr. Humphrey and Dr. Ward have each provided the critical leadership which has led to the successful development of their respective schools. I wish them well in the coming academic year and continued success in their future endeavors.

As you know, we are a University on a five-year mission to raise ourselves to the elite tier of institutions known nationally for their educational, research and patient care activities. In 1999 we adopted a strategic intent and its attendant goals and benchmarks to direct and measure our progress on this journey. Although many of you have heard these five goals so often that you can repeat them with me, for those that have not heard them before, they are:

• To double research revenues
• To improve educational outcomes
• To enhance patient care and patient satisfaction
• To improve our efforts in community service and diversity, and
• To build UMDNJ's reputation both statewide and nationally

This past year, our initiatives have allowed us to surpass expectations in several areas. Here are just a few of last year's highlights:

In the area of research:

• UMDNJ competitive research revenues are increasing at a substantially faster pace than the growth in federal funding. While funding of U.S. allopathic medical schools by the National Institutes of Health increased by a mean of 13 percent last year, NIH research grants to UMDNJ have increased by two to three times the national average over the past year.
• During the past year we also recruited two new University professors and established six new endowed chairs.

In the area of education:

• With the induction of 14 faculty members into the Master Educators Guild today, we now have 26 Master Educators at the University. These individuals, chosen by students, faculty and deans for their outstanding teaching credentials, are working actively to enhance the quality of teaching throughout the University.
• We have recruited outstanding new deans for two of our schools, Dr. Russell Joffe, who became dean of New Jersey Medical School in January after previously serving as dean of McMaster University Medical School, and Dr. Cecile Feldman, who became dean of New Jersey Dental School in February after serving as interim dean for the prior year.


• During its first accreditation site visit, the School of Public Health received several commendations, including being the first statewide multi-university school of public health in the nation to have met accreditation standards.
• The New Jersey Dental School has become the third dental school in the nation to implement a digital curriculum, a reflection of the on-going efforts at all UMDNJ's schools to ensure that our students are technologically proficient and learning about the latest advances in their respective fields.

In the area of clinical care:

• The Cancer Institute of New Jersey has become the University's first statewide Center of Excellence, with plans underway to expand our cancer programs in New Brunswick, Newark and South Jersey.
• The New Jersey Medical School signed an affiliation agreement with Atlantic Health Systems designating Morristown Memorial Hospital as a UMDNJ university hospital and Overlook Hospital as a major clinical affiliate.
• University Hospital, facing a large projected deficit for Fiscal Year 2001, actually finished the year with a modest profit. The hospital also has a excellent new CEO, Mr. Sidney Mitchell, formerly CEO of the University of Illinois Medical Center Hospital. Welcome Mr. Mitchell.
• University Behavioral HealthCare has expanded from six to 18 major behavioral health care facilities in New Jersey over the past three years and is now the largest behavioral health care program in the nation.
• An electronic medical records system is being implemented University-wide which will help to better care for our patients, improve our teaching and optimally position us to attract clinical trials to UMDNJ.

In the area of diversity and community service:

• We have established a University-wide Institute to Eliminate Health Disparities which will be based in the School of Public Health. Its goal is to focus the University's research and clinical expertise on programs that will lead to the elimination of health disparities based on race, gender and ethnicity. The Institute has been allocated money from the University for start-up funding and I anticipate a full-time executive director will be named this fall following a national search.

In the area of image:

• Last year, the University initiated a comprehensive advertising campaign, introduced a new logo, and launched an effective public relations program that included stories on UMDNJ research which appeared on all the major networks and in many of the nation's largest circulation newspapers.

Well, these are the highlights, although there is much more I could talk about. I hope you will agree that since my report to you on University Day last September, we've had a very productive year. We also have many exciting plans for Academic Year 2002 and will undoubtedly face many new challenges, but I believe that working together as a University family, we can maintain our momentum towards excellence.

First, I'd like to update you on our $356 million capital construction campaign. This past year, only a few of our many new projects were initiated, and one, the research annex on thePiscataway campus of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School was completed.

On the Newark campus, the new building for University Behavioral HealthCare will open in December and the expansion of the emergency room at University Hospital is about halfway completed. In addition, next March, the International Center for Public Health, the new home of two major programs at New Jersey Medical School, will host World Tuberculosis Day as its grand-opening event.

But this is just the beginning. By December 2002, we will hold ground-breaking ceremonies for all of our other planned expansions on the Newark, Piscataway, New Brunswick and Stratford campuses. This building program will increase our total facilities by nearly 20 percent, a rate of growth unprecedented in our 31 years of existence as a University.

On the Piscataway and New Brunswick campuses, we will renovate space in the Research Tower/Kessler Teaching Laboratories and the Medical Education Building; will construct a new research building which will also house the School of Public Health, a new building for the Child Health Institute; and will also erect a 143,000 square foot expansion of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

On the Stratford campus we have planned a 16,000 square foot renovation of research space in the Science Center, a 57,000 square foot addition to the Specialty Care Center for clinical care, and a 25,000 square foot renovation of the Primary Care Center, which houses the South Jersey Campuses of the School of Health Related Professions, the School of Nursing, the School of Public Health and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

When this building program is finished, the University will consist of 62 buildings with 5.8 million square feet of space set on 181 acres on five campuses.

But space alone is not enough. To achieve the national stature we seek, we must continue to recruit world-class scientists, clinicians and teachers to join the outstanding cadre of faculty already in our ranks. In order to provide the most cutting-edge therapies for our patients and enhance our clinical research programs, we are developing a University General Clinical Research Center. The goal of this program is to facilitate access to clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health. I am pleased that researchers at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the New Jersey Medical School have submitted a grant to the National Institutes of Health which, if funded, could provide between $2 and $5 million annually to further this initiative.

We must also continually evaluate and improve our curriculum to be able to offer our students the most relevant education and prepare them to be life-long problem solvers. Together with the other colleges and universities in the state, we must strive to work closely with the pharmaceutical and other high tech industries to educate the workforce of tomorrow, thereby maintaining the vitality of New Jersey's economy.

In the clinical arena, the realities of managed care and government reimbursement for health care services require that we vigorously continue our retooling of University Hospital, including the development of product lines and productivity measures that both meet the needs of the market and are profitable.

We must also work closely with our affiliated hospitals to achieve mutual success because we are dependent upon each other in order to offer the highest quality care in the best educational environment.

Together with government, our affiliated hospitals and the practicing physicians in New Jersey, we must work tirelessly to ensure that every individual--regardless of race, creed, color or financial status-- has access to quality health care.

Our efforts to ensure diversity among our students, faculty and staff is a major focus of the University this year. In the past, we have developed a national reputation for our minority student recruitment programs. We must continue these efforts and strive to find new approaches for identifying and recruiting disadvantaged students, faculty and staff to the University family.

And as a society, we must ensure that our best and brightest students are attracted to the health care professions and have the resources to achieve their goals. As a University, we must play our part by providing more scholarship support and by developing appropriate academic pipelines. Future generations of New Jerseyans are counting on us to produce health care professionals who are intelligent, compassionate, and committed to providing the highest quality care. This year, with support from the Foundation of UMDNJ, we made $500,000 in new scholarships available for our students. The deans tell me this support is making a difference in their recruiting efforts and we are committed to adding at least $500,000 more each year for the next four years.

Shortly, we will be unveiling a new and expanded marketing campaign to enhance our regional and national image. But the degree of success we have in this arena will also be heavily dependent on continually enhancing our stellar reputation in education, patient care and research.

As you heard just a few moments ago from Roger Fine, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is contributing a total of three $10 million grants to UMDNJ--the largest private contribution in the University's history-- to be used for three projects on our New Brunswick campus-- the Cancer Institute, the Child Health Institute and the Cardiovascular Institute. We are proud of the confidence that The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has had in the University and its ability to address the health care needs of the citizens of our state. In addition to our support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Foundation of UMDNJ has performed spectacularly well under the leadership of Mike Bassoff and Roger Fine.

With the recruitment of many new fund-raisers, decentralization of fund-raising activities, and the addition of several outstanding individuals to our Foundation board, we anticipate continued exponential growth in Foundation revenues to fuel our ambitious goals.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention one other major issue we face--the tightening environment of government regulatory affairs. Over the past year, we have all read stories in the national news about prestigious institutions of higher education which have been cited by federal regulators for violating research protocols, leading in some cases to the death of patients.

I believe that thus far our University is ahead of the curve on this issue because we have aggressively pursued our commitment to patient safety and medical privacy through two initiatives. An Office of Corporate Compliance has been established to guide the University in meeting increased demands for accountability in research and clinical care. It includes training courses to assure compliance with the new federal medical privacy laws that will take effect over the next five years.

In addition to this, the University has developed a human subjects protection program with responsiveness, training and monitoring components. The Institutional Review Boards have been restructured to improve the University's responsiveness to internal and external constituencies. We have become a national leader in developing innovative training programs related to new federal guidelines for clinical trials involving human subjects. Finally, we have implemented monitoring and observation programs to follow approved human research protocols from beginning to end. Regulatory affairs will continue to require maximum time and effort from many sectors within the University this coming year and into the future.

It is my firm belief that the pursuit of scholarship by our faculty is the underlying reason for our success. I have asked Dr. Saporito to lead the development of an initiative called "Scholarship Counts," which will be the core of a new qualitative and quantitative assessment plan that measures research and clinical activity, scholarly effort in education, degree of community service, and administrative contributions. "Scholarship Counts" will be our way of evaluating the broad scope of scholarly effort by UMDNJ's faculty.

My final thought to leave with you today is that we must continue the momentum of the past two years. Working together we will create a truly outstanding health sciences university. To obtain your valued input, I will schedule a series of meetings with faculty and students on each campus. These meetings will allow me to hear your thoughts on ways to improve our environment and stimulate productivity.

I am upbeat about our future. I believe that over the past two years, we have experienced phenomenal growth and that we are indeed a university on the move. I am immensely proud of our programs and thank all of you for helping to make it happen. With your support, we will continue on our trajectory to greatness. Thank you.