Thursday September 27, 2001

Dalton to address budget cuts, initiate partnerships among faculty

Dr. William Dalton, a cancer researcher who worked for 16 years in the Arizona Health Sciences Center, was appointed this week as dean of the College of Medicine. He will begin work Dec. 15.

Dalton, currently the associate vice president of health sciences at the University of South Florida, said his primary goal is to initiate partnerships among different university departments to more effectively and efficiently providing the services mandated by the university.

"Academic medicine is under siege," he said. "The cost of research is increasing, (and we're) given mandates to provide teaching, research and public service."

To the man who will be Dalton's immediate superior, Vice President for Health Sciences Dr. Raymond Woosley, Dalton's interdisciplinary approach is precisely what the College of Medicine needs to counter potential state-mandated budget cuts.

"If I were dean, I'd be doing the same thing," said Woosley, who began his job at the UA six weeks ago.

Dalton admitted, though, that running a medical college under a tight budget will not be easy - especially if he doesn't have faculty support.

"We're going to have to become creative," he said. "Addressing (budget cuts) is going to take buy-ins among the faculty."

Woosley, who called Dalton "an internationally recognized leader in cancer and medicine," went even further, saying that some programs may have to be cut.

"We may have to stop doing some things," he said.

But he added that the cuts will not stop the college from going forward with certain initiatives, including a "general clinical research center," where scientific advances developed on campus could be translated into useful medical practice.

For Dalton, the key to implementing new initiatives is collaboration, and he stressed the idea of health sciences as a "global phenomenon."

He says it would combine the efforts of the various colleges of the Arizona Health Sciences Center, including the college of nursing, college of pharmacy and college of health professions, along with the college of medicine.

Dalton will earn $360,000 a year, and 26 percent of the his salary will come from state funds, with the remainder coming from grants and endowment income, said George Humphrey, director of public affairs for AHSC.

Dalton had originally been a finalist for the position of vice president for Health Sciences - a job which in the past had encompassed the duties of dean. But AHSC already had plans in the works to add a dean, and those plans were expedited when Dalton was offered that job.

"It just worked out on a shorter time scale than anyone expected," Humphrey said.

Dalton worked his way through the medical ranks at the University of Arizona, beginning as a resident in 1981 before becoming deputy director of the Arizona Cancer Center in 1996. He also founded the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the Arizona Health Sciences Center.

For the past four years, he has served as an administrator and researcher at USF.