College President James Freedman appointed Andrew Wallace to a second four-year term as dean of the Dartmouth Medical School following a standard evaluation near the end of his first four-year term.
Wallace, 59, was named vice president for health affairs and dean of the DMS in March of 1990. Before Dartmouth, Wallace spent 30 years at Duke University.
Freedman made the appointment after an evaluation conducted by Acting Provost Bruce Pipes. According to a press release, Pipes solicited confidential information about Wallace from different campus sources like faculty, students, overseers and administrators.
Wallace said he has a number of plans for the next four years, but his central goal is to try to build a greater connection between the medical school and the College, particularly in the life sciences.
He also said he would like to work on increasing the medical school's endowment.
"We need to persuade donors and foundations that the College and the medical school can do research and teach together better than alone or independent," he said.
Wallace said he would also like to increase interaction between the College's other professional schools and the DMS.
Freedman and Pipes were the only ones involved in Wallace's evaluation after the information had been gathered, Jeannine McPherson of the Provost's office said.
Pipes was out of town yesterday and could not be reached for comment. Freedman, who underwent his fourth installment of chemotherapy yesterday, was also unavailable for comment.
In a press release Freedman said, "It is clear from our review that Dean Wallace has been an outstanding leader of the Dartmouth Medical School. His acumen in the competitive and rapidly changing world of medical education has enhanced the Medical School's standing among the nation's medical schools."
But the DMS is currently not near the top of national medical school rankings. Wallace admitted that not being nationally ranked bothered him.
"I'd rather be ranked that not ranked, to be honest," Wallace said. "But the procedures they use have a lot of flaws in them."
Wallace said one of the problems is the rankings are based on research funding and as a small school, the DMS gets fewer dollars of funding.
"But, our research support per faculty member is in the top 15 percent nationally," Wallace said.
College Spokesman Alex Huppe declined to comment on whether the medical school's national ranking was an issue during the evaluation, citing reasons of confidentiality.
Wallace said he had several accomplishments during the last four years, such as correcting the medical school's financial difficulties.
In addition, he said he reinstated the tenure system abolished in 1979 and noted that the faculty approved a new curriculum that was developed with significant input from the students.
"The students are better, the curriculum has improved and the leadership has improved," Wallace said. "The Dartmouth Medical School is better than it was four years ago."
