At the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora this summer, a torch is being passed. Not one like at the Paris Olympic Games, but in the role of dean, a leadership position that pays more than a million dollars a year.
The position had been held for the last nine years by Dr. John J. Reilly Jr., 67, a pulmonologist. He stepped down at the end of June, with the intention to continue serving as an instructor. He was replaced by Dr. John Sampson, 57, a neurosurgeon whose previous job was chair of the Neurosurgery Department at Duke University in North Carolina.
Sampson started on July 1 with a $1.5 million salary, and plans to upgrade the school’s reputation and attract the best and the brightest, he said in a recent interview. Earlier this month, US News and World Report ranked CU Anschutz and 15 other medical schools as top-tier research institutions.
“In some ways, what we want to do is make sure that we have a robust infrastructure so that we can really make this an attractive place to bring the best researchers, which will then attract other top-notch researchers, and we'll attract students to train either in medical school or graduate school under those individuals,” he said.
He plans to continue caring for brain surgery patients, with a specialty in finding treatments for an often fatal form of brain cancer called glioblastoma. With the rest of his time, he said he’ll seek to inspire and lead others. He also hopes to spearhead an effort to solve problems that might not surface in conversations unless someone is making a special effort to hear them.
“It's really this idea that throughout our community that CU and UC Health are rising to that level of the top 10 places nationally that people talk about,” Sampson said. “How you get there, in my opinion, by listening to people is that when I'm walking in the hallway and I see someone who's part of our team and I ask them, ‘How's your day? What can I do for you?’ I'm actually going to listen. It's not small talk, right? And if they say, ‘Well, gee, this is a problem or that is a problem,’ I'm going to try to make those things better.”
He hasn’t had anyone share such problems since he started a month ago and then went on vacation, but he’s already pinpointed one problem for which he’d like to seek a solution: the prohibitive cost of medical school, which costs $49,000 a year for Colorado residents and $72,000 for out-of-state students.
He’s hoping for honesty and transparency about what changes might improve the experience for faculty and staff.
“I've already told my team that I will value them more if they disagree with me than if they agree with me. And that's because I want to hear their ideas ... I want to make sure that people know that I value disagreement, good conversations and creativity.”
Reilly, his predecessor, who according to public records was earning $1.13 million a year, said his own legacy was bringing more women into chairperson’s positions.
“I think what I'm most proud of is the department chairs and other leaders that we recruited during my tenure here …. I've been doing this for over nine years, and it's been a great job, and it's time for somebody else.”
He said he’ll do some traveling before returning to the classroom to teach medicine.
