Our 50th year is off to an incredible start! I spent Monday evening with members of our founding and early faculty, including Dr. Phil Krutzsch, who was the first faculty member to join Dr. Merlin K. “Monte” DuVal to begin building this College in 1964. At 97 years old, Dr. Krutzsch holds a wealth of knowledge and memories from this College and has seen medicine change immeasurably throughout the years. Make sure you check out photos from that evening, which included first-year student Jamie Lawrence sharing the story of her path to medical school and a heartfelt and inspirational keynote from Dr. Paul Capp, who joined our faculty in 1971.
While we celebrate 50 years of innovation, we also have to recognize one thing that has remained constant during that time: treating patients with compassion and humanity. We celebrate this on Solidarity Day for Compassionate Patient Care, which started at this College in 2012 and is now recognized and celebrated nationally by the Gold Humanism Honor Society. I hope you will join us for this year’s celebration at noon on Friday, February 17, on the UAHS Plaza, where you will hear remarkable stories of compassion and kindness in health care.
More Upcoming Events & Celebrations
The first two Tucson Doc Talks, emceed by COM-P Interim Dean Ken Ramos and me and co-hosted by Banner Health, went incredibly well. We had a great turnout from the community. Two more lectures in the Tucson series remain:
- Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Gut Microbes: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
with Fayez Ghishan, MD, professor and chair of the UA Department of Pediatrics in Tucson and director of the UA Steele Children’s Research Center
- Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Take a Deep Breath: Is a Cure for Asthma on the Horizon?
with Monica Kraft, MD, professor and chair of the UA Department of Medicine in Tucson and associate director of the UA Health Sciences Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center
Register soon to reserve your spot!
Southern Arizona Biomedical Research Symposia: Improving Healthcare with Precision Medicine & Big Data
This half-day symposium will focus on the data collection infrastructure that makes the emerging field of precision medicine possible. It takes place from 8:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, February 28, in Kiewit Auditorium and is presented by the UA Research, Discovery & Innovation Office. Please register here if you plan to attend.
Buffmire Lecture – Genetic Rush Hour: How the proteins of our cells follow traffic signs in normal and genetic diseases
Nobel Laureate Randy Schekman, PhD, professor of cell development and biology at University of California Berkeley, will deliver the spring 2017 Buffmire Lecture at noon on Friday, March 3, in DuVal Auditorium. This special presentation is a combined effort between the Buffmire Lecture Series, supported by the Flinn Foundation, and the COM-T Dean’s 50th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture Series.
Dr. Schekman won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2013 along with James E. Rothman and Thomas C. Südhof "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.” A free lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to glinda@medadmin.arizona.edu by February 27 if you plan to attend.
Match Day
This is a special day for our fourth-year medical students, as they learn where they will spend the next several years as resident-physicians. Last year we had a record number match with residency programs in Arizona. Will it be another record year for Arizona matches? We’ll find out on March 17!
President & CEO of AAMC Dr. Darrell Kirch will deliver the James E. Dalen Distinguished Lecture for Health Policy at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 18, in DuVal Auditorium, discussing “The Health of Americans in a New Political Order.”
Celebrating 50 Years of Innovation
At the February 8 Faculty Meeting and the Founding and Early Faculty Appreciation Dinner we featured a new video, 50 Years of Innovation, which gives a glimpse of our first 50 years and the people who made it possible. Please share this video with your colleagues and friends and join us as we continue a year of celebration!
