Med school starts dean search
An advisory panel is told to seek someone who can develop a biosciences industry
The person selected to replace Dr. Edwin Cadman as dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine must be able to lead development of a biosciences industry in Hawaii, the search advisory committee was told this week at its first meeting.
Cadman resigned in June because of a neurodegenerative disorder but has remained on the faculty, teaching students. Succeeding him as interim dean was T. Samuel Shomaker.
Co-chairing the search advisory committee are Dew-Anne Langcaon, chief operating officer at PacifiCap Management, and Gary Ostrander, University of Hawaii-Manoa chancellor for research and graduate education.
Manoa Chancellor Denise Konan encouraged the committee to search for candidates who can express a vision and have the skills and leadership qualities to move the medical school forward.
Ostrander said, "I expect wide interest in the dean's position, given the new state-of-the-art campus facilities and our highly regarded education and research programs at the school."
Langcaon, with Hawaii's largest locally based venture capital firm that invests in high-technology companies, said the dean of the medical school "holds a critically important leadership role in the development and growth of a biosciences industry" in the state.
She said the next dean "will need to forge very complex collaborative relationships throughout the community, and I'm pleased that the university has assembled a committee that is representative of the many stakeholders."
A consulting firm will be hired to conduct a search. The committee already has received proposals from some high-profile companies specializing in that area, according to a UH news release.
Advisory committee members from the medical school are Thomas Au, assistant clinical professor of medicine; Mary Boland, dean and professor, School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene; Linda Chang, professor of medicine; David Easa, program director for clinical research; Duane Gubler, professor and chairman, tropical medicine; Danny Takanishi, associate professor and chairman of surgery; and Richard Yanagihara, professor of pediatrics.
Others are Beadie Dawson, president, Friends of JABSOM; Cyril Goshima, president, Hawaii Independent Physicians Association; Robert Hiam, president and chief executive officer, Hawaii Medical Services Association; Tom Humphreys, professor, Pacific Biosciences Research Center; Laurence Kolonel, deputy director, Cancer Research Center of Hawaii; Chuck Sted, president and chief executive officer, Hawaii Pacific Health; and Art Ushijima, president and chief executive officer, the Queen's Medical Center.
A medical school student body representative also will be selected for the committee.
