March 28, 2024

Cover Story: Medical Schools

The Weight of Expectation

UCF’s Dr. Deborah German and FIU’s Dr. John Rock will be only the third and fourth people in the nation to build a med school from scratch in nearly 30 years.

Cynthia Barnett | 7/1/2007
Dr. Deborah German

Born: 1950 in Providence, Rhode Island

Family: Two grown daughters, one in Nashville and one at Duke law school.

Med school: Harvard University Residency: University of Rochester, New York

Fellowship: Duke University Aditional: Scholar in Residence, Association of American Medical Colleges

Medical specialty: Rheumatic and genetic diseases

Career track: Associate dean of medical education at Duke; senior associate dean of medical education at Vanderbilt; President and CEO, Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville

Salary as UCF med school dean: $400,000

medical advice: “I think if you want to be happy throughout your life, always have three goals: Physical, spiritual and educational. If you always have all three going at the same time, life’s good.”


Field Work: Bulldozers clear the way for dean Dr. Deborah German’s med school at Lake Nona. The school will be a key component of a 50-acre research and academic campus, which will also house the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and a $560-million VA hospital. German is working to raise $1.6 million for full scholarships to the entire 40-student inaugural class.

As bulldozers chug across the Lake Nona site, German divides her time between cheerleading-style speeches — Thakkar describes her as having “mesmerized” the community — and the nuts-and-bolts of starting the school. Her biggest challenge may be convincing top-notch faculty and students to come to UCF. In late May, she said some administrators had accepted positions but she wasn’t ready to announce the appointments. Coming to an unaccredited school “is risk, I have to be honest,” German says. “I cannot establish a track record until I establish a track record.”

German wants to be able to offer full scholarships to each of the 40 students in the inaugural class. So far, Orlando’s business community has come through with only four of the 40. “I’d like every major corporation in the city to give one,” she says.

In April, German got a jump on UCF’s application to the accreditation committee. She submitted a 5-inch-thick plan for the med school one month ahead of schedule. And, taking no chances that the physical space will be ready as planned for the inaugural class in fall 2009, German ordered up facilities in UCF’s research park that will pass muster in case of delay at Lake Nona. “I heard there are hurricanes in this state,” German says. “We’ve got a plan A, but we’ve also got a plan B.”

At a recent meet-and-greet with the Panamerican Medical Association of Central Florida, some doctors questioned German’s non-traditional curriculum plan: Courses are integrated into an organ-based curriculum that teaches basic science and clinical science together. The approach, similar to that being developed at Florida International University, is the trend at medical schools around the nation. German calls it an effort to “teach medicine in the way our students are going to see it unfold in a clinical setting.”

Some also worry whether German has designed the med school’s curriculum and organizational structure without input from the administrators and faculty members who must buy into it and carry it out. German says the planning has been “a real community effort,” involving faculty from various UCF colleges including health, nursing, engineering, business and biomedical sciences, as well as physicians in the community who have served on medical faculties.

German acknowledges she tends toward the hard path. (In 2001, she finished the Honolulu Marathon.) Four out of five finalists for the UCF dean’s job thought enough of the challenge that they dropped out of the running. German was the last one standing. She says she faced a “very hard decision” with three job offers, including one to build a medical school in New York. Ultimately, she says, she chose UCF because of the widespread support for the med school within the community, from Tavistock and other donations to UCF President John Hitt’s making “the entire university available to me.”

She’s ready to deliver on the expectations, she says. “Central Florida wants it all,” she says. “We want to be a 21st century medical school — what a school like Harvard or Johns Hopkins was to the century in which they were born.”

Field Work: Bulldozers clear the way for dean Dr. Deborah German’s med school at Lake Nona. The school will be a key component of a 50-acre research and academic campus, which will also house the Burnham Institute for Medical Research and a $560-million VA hospital. German is working to raise $1.6 million
for full scholarships to the entire 40-student inaugural class.

Tags: North Central, Education, Healthcare

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