UCSD Medical Dean Heading Back to Yale : Education: Gerard Burrow, credited with recruiting nationally recognized scientists for the college, is rejoining his alma mater as head of its medical school.
Gerard Burrow, dean of the UC San Diego School of Medicine, announced Wednesday that he will leave California with mixed feelings to become dean of Yale University’s medical school, his alma mater.
“It’s been one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make,” said Dr. Burrow, reached in Connecticut, where he was ironing out details for his new position. “But the ivy tendrils wrapped around my roots and pulled me back.”
Burrow, who is also vice chancellor for health sciences at UCSD, joined the university in March, 1988. He will stay until July 1, drawing to a close a four-year stint marked with ambitious projects that thrust UCSD into the national spotlight.
“Dr. Burrow has guided UCSD’s health sciences through a period of growth and development in patient care and academic programs,” UCSD Chancellor Richard Atkinson said.
Burrow is credited with recruiting nationally recognized scientists, including AIDS researcher Flossie Wong-Staal, molecular geneticist Webster Cavenne, and Nobel laureate George Palade. He also oversaw several La Jolla construction projects such as the Perlman Ambulatory Care Center, the Thornton Hospital, and the now-completed Shiley Eye Center.
UCSD officials say they have not yet formulated a plan for recruiting a dean to replace Burrow. That effort will take place over the next few months.
Burrow, who graduated from Yale’s medical school in 1958, served as a member of its faculty for 10 years. His selection as dean came after a national search that included evaluating more than 140 candidates.
“We are fortunate indeed that Gerard Burrow is returning to Yale to lead the school of medicine at this important time,” Yale President Benno C. Schmidt Jr. said. “He is a superb and caring physician who has carried forward important research in endocrinology and other medical areas, and his broad experience in Canada and in California will help him lead Yale in a time of great challenge and opportunity.”
In assuming his duties at Yale, Burrow will be replacing Dr. Leon E. Rosenberg, who left his academic post after 26 years. Rosenberg is now president of Bristol-Meyers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute.
For Burrow, whose career has taken him from Yale to the University of Toronto to UCSD and back to Yale, this new move was simply another opportunity he couldn’t resist.
“I became a Southern Californian and really began to flourish--I switched from tennis and squash to bicycling and sailing. There’s really a sense of excitement in California and at UCSD that really isn’t there to the same degree at Yale,” Burrow said. “But, when everything came down to it, it was having been an alumnus of Yale--the fact that I thought the things I had done since leaving Yale meant I could make a significant contribution to Yale Medical School.”
