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Chancellor Harold M. Maurer discusses UNMC’s progress during the annual faculty meeting last week. |
“We’re not at the top, but we’re on the right trajectory and gaining ground,” UNMC Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D., said last Tuesday during his annual state-of-the-campus report at the Annual Faculty Meeting. “I’m really proud of the faculty and staff who are making this happen.”
Three members of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents — Bob Whitehouse, Howard Hawks and Randy Ferlic, M.D. — attended Tuesday’s Annual Faculty meeting, which included Dr. Maurer’s address, followed by the awarding of outstanding teaching, mentoring and community service awards. Faculty members also were recognized for their length of service to UNMC.
“To be a world-class academic health science center we have to be strong in biomedical research,” Dr. Maurer said. Outstanding education and patient care are associated with strong research programs, he said.
During his address, Dr. Maurer updated the audience on UNMC’s educational, research and clinical accomplishments of the past year, as well as the ongoing construction projects that will yield new educational and research facilities in 2008.
He also shared several guiding principles including:
- Think strategic big ideas. “We’re not incrementalists,” he said.
- Focus on ideas and make them happen.
- Make decisions and execute them.
- Be a dreamer, not a daydreamer.
“If you do nothing, you have nothing,” Dr. Maurer said.
UNMC, however, is doing much to realize its goals, Dr. Maurer said. Despite challenges, including the erosion of support from the National Institutes of Health, UNMC hopes to reach $200 million in extramural grant support by the end of 2009. “We understand what the issues and challenges are, but the goal is still our goal,” Dr. Maurer said.
In addition, UNMC recently opened the state’s first College of Public Health and, at the request of the Norfolk community, is looking at opening a fifth division of nursing in the northeastern town.
During a recent faculty retreat, UNMC leaders discussed two new strategic initiatives, he said: a Center for Translational Research, which would take research from the bench to the bedside and into industry, and a Center for Healthy Aging, which addresses projections that there will be more living parents than children and that those who reach age 60 will have at least one chronic illness.
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From left: A. “Angie” Rizzino, Ph.D., receives the UNMC Outstanding Mentor of Graduate Students Award from Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D., at the annual faculty meeting last week. |
- Skills count more than size.
- Failure is the norm, resist discouragement.
- Embrace fundamental change, reject fads.
- Do what you’ve promised, even during tough times.
- The best leaders are passionate about their work.
- Students and patients are a priority – it’s why UNMC exists.
- Safety and quality are critical to success.
- Relationships are not chance, but choice.
“Planning doesn’t guarantee success,” he said, “but not planning virtually guarantees failure.”