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Leading Alzheimer’s Researcher is School of Medicine’s 13th Dean
“I am deeply honored by the University of Virginia’s decision to appoint me as the next dean of the School of Medicine. The School of Medicine and the Medical Center represent the best of Mr. Jefferson’s intentions that the University be a power and service for the public good,” DeKosky says. DeKosky returns to UVA three decades after he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neurochemistry at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Center in UVA’s Department of Neurology. His first academic appointment was in UVA’s Department of Neurology in 1979. “The University has found in Steven DeKosky a dean who will take the lead in creating new models of excellence for the United States and the world in education, clinical care, research and service to our community,” says UVA President John T. Casteen III. DeKosky succeeds pediatrician Sharon L. Hostler, M.D., who has served as Interim Vice President and Dean since former Dean Arthur Garson, Jr., M.D., M.P.H., was appointed UVA’s Executive Vice President and Provost in May 2007. Thanks to the work of his predecessors, DeKosky says a great deal of planning for the School of Medicine’s future has been completed. With the Claude Moore Medical Education Building set to open in 2010 and UVA’s Medical Education Task Force having just completed its assessment on teaching the next generation of medical students, DeKosky says he can focus not only on what needs to go into the new building, but more importantly, what the students need from their medical education. “There needs to be expansion of opportunities for student training, use of simulation technology, managing the expansion of the class size, and incorporation of the expansion of the hospital into student experiences,” he says. As DeKosky plans how to best serve UVA’s medical students and residents, he can draw on the experiences of his oldest daughter, who just graduated from medical school. “I’ve learned to really listen to the students. And I will not forget that,” DeKosky says. One of the biggest changes in medical education from DeKosky’s time as a medical student is technology, which he says has transformed medical education by taking information which used to be found in library stacks and literally put it in the palms of students and residents. This allows students to spend more time with patients and gain important practical knowledge, he says. The sheer volume of new medical information, DeKosky adds, has also changed medical education because the accepted best practices of today will completely change over three years. “Students, residents and physicians today have to be committed to lifelong learning. One of our jobs is to facilitate their ability to get the most up-to-date, relevant information for their education and clinical practice,” DeKosky says. Continuing Research, Patient Care and Advocacy DeKosky’s research is focused on the science and clinical care of Alzheimer’s disease. His basic neuroscience laboratory studies the early pathological and chemical alterations in the brain associated with the development of Alzheimer’s as well as the neurochemistry of brain trauma and how it relates to Alzheimer’s. DeKosky is currently leading a 3,000-person, National Institutes of Health-funded trial on the ability of Ginkgo biloba to prevent or delay the development of Alzheimer’s disease. He also is directing a program for developing biomarkers to track the effectiveness of Alzheimer’s treatment and prevention therapies. “As a dean who has done and will continue to do basic and clinical research, I believe you have more authority on the pulpit to encourage our researchers to do the same thing. I hope to be able to facilitate other people’s research as dean and through my continued research,” DeKosky says. Casteen and Garson have charged DeKosky with establishing UVA as a center for translational research – the practice of taking basic science breakthroughs and turning them into usable treatments that benefit patients. That doesn’t mean basic science research will be neglected, DeKosky says. “There has been a transformation in clinical medicine and academic medicine and it is in translational research. You have to have a strong basic science core to support any clinical research. It is our challenge to learn and teach that translational process. This is the future of academic medicine; we will never go back to the separation of clinical and basic sciences,” DeKosky says. The Bottom Line “I love doing different things, and I hate being bored,” he says. As for his leadership style as Dean of the School of Medicine, DeKosky says can be summed up with a simple philosophy: “Forge consensus of your academic leaders, and never, ever break a promise. If you say you will do something, you have to do it.”
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Steven T. DeKosky, M.D., an international leader in the field of Alzheimer’s disease research, became Vice President and 13th Dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine on Aug. 1.