Dean Pamela's Messages

A note from Stan Gerson and Pamela Davis To our School of Medicine Community, We are writing to share the sad news that renowned neurologist and longtime professor Robert Barry Daroff, MD, died Sunday, Jan. 12, at the age of 88. Bob was a towering figure in th...

This will be my last Dean’s message. I’ve spent quite a spectacular week with lots of wonderful virtual send-offs from my visiting committee, my leadership team, the development team, several groups of chairs, some of my colleagues, and the Medical Alumni Board—who invited a good many people to hear...

Last week I had the last meeting of my Visiting Committee. They are distinguished academics, alumni, businessmen and others with interest who have taken time and contributed energy to the School of Medicine. It was by Zoom—it certainly wasn’t supposed to be that way! We were supposed to have a preli...

It’s finally June—a most amazing time of year. The full leafy green of summer has opened on our trees and shrubs. The State of Ohio is beginning to open, too, tentatively, after COVID lockdown. So is the university. For the School, many of us, especially the lab-based people, never left, but modifie...

This weekend, we heard the projected impact of COVID on the University’s finances from President Snyder. The COVID sickness must be countered, and the remedies the University have crafted are significant reductions in operating budgets, suspension of retirement contributions for faculty and high-lev...

A few short weeks ago, during the virtual graduation of the Class of 2020, many of us physicians rose to recite with Steve Ricanati, Interim Vice Dean for Medical Education, and our graduates, the Hippocratic Oath. We promised: “…I will maintain the honor and noble traditions of the medical profe...

At our new house, we have a new ecosystem. The opossum and the skunk who actually resided next door but visited our back yard regularly are gone. There seem to be fewer squirrels and more chipmunks. But—we have a hawk. Actually, we have a pair of them. We saw them first a few nights ago when a gre...

And so, we entered commencement weekend. The opening event was the awards ceremony, then the special CCLCM ceremony, then the convocation, and finally our diploma ceremony. IT seemed quite immediate on the computer screen. Our speaker, Bruce Walker, told his own story of things being unexpected in h...

Mother’s Day arrived, a spring day sandwiched between two November-type storms. There were the requisite handmade cards and presents, the special breakfasts, and the phone calls—and the jammed circuits during the time of day in which it was civilized to speak on both west coast and east coast. It wa...

I sold my house of 33 years last week. As the movers carried my furniture out, it felt as if my life was being disassembled item by item. A few of the boxes had pieces of my mother’s in them and some, of my grandmother’s. Out they went in a long continuous line. A builder constructed the house for ...