Ex-Faculty Member Proposed as Dean of UCI Medical School

Edward J. Quilligan, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UC Davis, is being recommended as new dean of UC Irvine’s College of Medicine, it was learned Tuesday. If approved by the UC regents in January, Quilligan, 61, will also become the university’s vice chancellor for health sciences.

A member of the search committee, who declined to be identified, said that Quilligan had been chosen “several days ago” and that he accepted the offer Tuesday. If the regents approve the appointment, Quilligan will assume the new post in July of 1987.

“I’m absolutely delighted to be offered the position,” Quilligan said in a telephone interview from Sacramento. “I think it will be a great challenge, and I’m looking forward to it.” His primary goal for UCI, which he called “an excellent medical school,” would be for it to “become the No. 1 medical school in the United States.”

“Ted Quilligan is a distinguished physician and an accomplished administrator,” said UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason. “I’m looking forward to working with him as a colleague.”

Former Faculty Member

Quilligan, who was born in Cleveland and raised in Columbus, Ohio, was a member of the UCI faculty from 1980 to 1983.

“The search committee said they are excited to have him back in a leadership role,” said Kathy Jones, assistant vice chancellor for communications. “He is highly skilled at bringing together diverse groups of people and opinions.”

Quilligan is a fellow of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science and past president of the American Gynecology and Obstetrics Society. According to Jones, he has a “solid research background” and a reputation as “a very good administrator,” as well as being a practicing physician. He has held major posts at Yale and USC, Jones said.

UCI’s medical school has been headed by an interim dean, Dr. Gerald D. Weinstein, since January of 1985, when Dr. Stanley van den Noort was not reappointed to that post. His departure was widely attributed to his intransigent support for an on-campus hospital affiliated with the medical school. The issue divided Irvine--the college as well as the community--for more than a decade.

The bitter, tangled fight between those who wanted a community hospital in Irvine and those who wanted to see a campus medical center was waged in local and county government, in the medical community, on the Board of Regents and in the halls of the Legislature. For years, each side was able to frustrate the other, but never able to achieve its own goal.

Struggle Ended in 1983

In August, 1983, then UCI Chancellor Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. called van den Noort into his office and informed him that the university was withdrawing its request to the Board of Regents for campus land to build a hospital. With that, the struggle that became known as the “Irvine hospital wars” ended.

The way was then cleared for construction of a community hospital, although the project was ultimately taken over by the privately owned Beverly Hills-based American Medical International chain. Ground was recently broken for the $80-million, 177-bed complex at the corner of Alton Parkway and Sand Canyon Road on a 15-acre site donated by the Irvine Co.

Quilligan said during recent visits to the campus that he “did not get the sense that there’s a war going on. I must assume that a great deal of the reconciliation has taken place.”

Van den Noort, who remains on the UCI medical school faculty, praised the selection of Quilligan.

“I think he’s an excellent choice,” van den Noort said. “He’s a national figure and a friend, and I think he’ll do a great job. A great deal of credit has to go to Dr. Weinstein for holding the school together during the intervening period.”

In the months and years that have followed the university’s capitulation on the hospital issue, this reconciliation has taken the form of major grants and gifts that have begun to flow onto the campus. Contributors have included the Irvine Co., the Fluor Foundation, C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, Koll Construction Co. and Dr. Arnold O. Beckman, founder of Beckman Instruments, with the total amount exceeding $10 million.

Buildings Rise on Campus

Among the concrete examples of this largess now rising on the campus are the $3.8-million Donald L. Bren Events Center, named for the Irvine Co. chairman, and the $4-million Beckman Laser Institute, named for the Orange County philanthropist.

During the climactic years of the battle over the hospitals, William J. Lillyman, UCI’s executive vice chancellor, made numerous speeches suggesting that the university needed to “build little bridges” to its neighbors. In the spring of 1985 a $1-million footbridge over Campus Drive--half of which was paid for by the Irvine Co.--was dedicated, joining the campus to the company’s Town Center shopping plaza.

However, support for the rapprochement between the university and the county’s major economic interests in the wake of the hospital settlement has not been unanimous.

“I’m delighted not to have been a part of it,” van den Noort said.