UCI Loss of Medical Dean Leaves a Gap : * His Successor Must Work to Bring More Women Into Top Posts at the Medical College

Dr. Walter L. Henry did good work in helping rescue the UC Irvine Medical Center from financial disaster. His surprise resignation as the university’s chancellor of health sciences and dean of the College of Medicine will leave a major gap.

But Henry’s record on filling top-level posts at the medical college with women was less sterling, and his successor’s task in that area likely will be as tough as balancing budgets.

Henry resigned last month after UCI’s new chancellor, Laurel L. Wilkening, rejected his proposals for organizational change as too expensive. Henry, identified in a fall University of California study as the top-paid administrator in the UC system at $211,400 a year, wanted to remain as vice chancellor but have someone else be dean of medicine and report to him.

Wilkening said that at a time of budget cuts, she could not approve the creation of such a high-level post. She is right. The entire university system has been told to cinch in the belt, but students have complained that they are being asked to pay too much more and the top administrators are giving up too little. To establish a new, top-level position like dean of medicine would have sent the wrong message.

Still, even Henry’s foes on campus must remember that when he took over nearly five years ago, the medical center’s deficit was around $12 million a year. That’s because the hospital treats most of the county’s poor, people who can’t pay at all or who have insurance that covers only a small fraction of the cost of their treatment. It took a concerted effort by the hospital and university staff, the county and the state to turn the situation around, but the financial health of the medical center remains fragile.

The status of female professors at the medical center is also weak. A report last spring found only 10 of the 168 full professors at the college are women, putting it last among the five UC medical schools. Henry’s successor must hire and promote more women and ensure everyone supports the goal of equality.

While University of Washington provost, Wilkening was a strong proponent of hiring more women and minorities. As UCI chancellor, she said the medical school and the hospital demanded her “immediate attention” during a time of proposed health care reform. Juggling the competing demands of the hospital and the teaching school, watching finances and correcting gender imbalances present a formidable challenge for Wilkening, and for Henry’s successor.