'My Vocation is My Avocation'
Friends of the School of Medicine support its quest for prominence
- their goals will be championed by D. Craig Brater.
Workaholic? Maybe.
Dedicated? Absolutely.
His average work day can easily last sixteen hours. Recently, he
presided over three major professional organizations at the same
time. His leisure reading is medical journals. Still, D. Craig Brater,
MD, the newest dean of the IU School of Medicine, doesn't perceive
himself as fixated on his career.
"I'm lucky that my vocation also is my avocation," he
says simply.
Unlike some other highly successful physicians, Dr. Brater did
not always aspire to be a physician, nor did he foresee the leadership
role he has accepted today The courses that most interested him
in high school and college first steered him toward medicine. His
medical school experience helped narrow his path.
"There was never any question in my mind about academic medicine
as opposed to private practice," he says. "I thrive in
an environment of being surrounded by learners, being able to interact
with colleagues who are smarter than I, and being able to pursue
intellectual questions."
That love of intellectual stimulation provided the impetus to Dr.
Brater's rise on the administrative track. In 1990, he was asked
to serve as the interim chair of the Department of Medicine. He
accepted, thinking, "I'll be a good soldier and get some experience
that undoubtedly will prove valuable for the future."
However, the job proved to be an enormous challenge, which is all
that was needed to pique his interest and entice him to make the
interim position a ten-year career. "I dove into the job and
I found it to be a very steep learning curve. I am one of those
kinds of people - as are all faculty in an environment like this
- who is turned on by a steep learning curve. Serving as chairman
was sufficiently stimulating and fun, that I decided I would be
willing to give up some other things and go down this path, realizing
that once you go down a path like that you can't go back."
Although research remains his primary professional passion, Dr.
Brater says he now derives his satisfaction from the success of
others.
"My definition of an academic medical center is that it fosters
the development of young people - students, residents, post-doctoral
fellows, junior faculty. As you become a senior faculty member,
and particularly one with leadership responsibilities, part of your
job description is to advance educational and career opportunities."
Dr. Brater says he will be putting his research projects on hiatus
as he settles in as dean and familiarizes himself with his new broad
range of responsibilities. He also must reduce his involvement with
internal medicine professional organizations so that his time away
from campus is decreased. That is in contrast to his belief that
visibility is important to optimize opportunities for the School.
"If we are going to be a player on the national stage, we
can't be too insulated. We need to be involved in national forums,"
he says. Spreading the word within the State of Indiana also is
on his agenda. "We haven't educated the public and we haven't
educated business leaders in Indiana about what we are all about.
So we must have a lot of outreach. We need to be tooting our own
horn both within the city and around the state."
Positioning IUSM as a national leader comes up often when the new
dean talks about his future plans. Tied to those discussions is
the desire to dramatically increase IUSM's grant funding from the
National Institutes of Health.
"We clearly have articulated a goal and a vision that we want
to be one of the top academic medical centers in the country"
Dr. Brater says.
"So you ask yourself, what is the measuring stick for that?
Well, we have three missions: education, clinical care and research.
There is no real good measure of education in terms of any kind
of national ranking. There is no good measure of clinical care in
national rankings."
But an objective measure of ranking is found in NIH research dollars,
he says. The levels of research funding awarded an institution provide
unassailable, accurate data that reflect on the quality of its clinical
programs and education. State-of-the-art clinical programs are necessary
to successfully compete for NIH funding, and both combined usually
mirror the quality of the school's education program, he explains.
That leads to another goal of the new dean: finding or creating
more space for research programs. "One of the biggest challenges
of this office results from the School's great success in terms
of research; we are out of space. We need facilities to accommodate
the accomplishments of our current faculty and, if we want to expand
our research envelope, we need even more space."
The challenges faced by D. Craig Brater as dean of IU School of
Medicine are not unique compared to those faced by the deans of
other schools of medicine. Dr. Brater, who openly admits he is stimulated
by challenges, has willingly taken up the gauntlet and is committed
to his new role. Although ultimately the School's achievements rest
upon the success of individual faculty, Dean Brater is prepared
to lend his sixteen-hour work days - more if necessary - to assure
their success.
"My job is to help provide the environment that will allow
the faculty's talents to blossom," he says. His eagerness to
do so is palpable.
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