<p>The community meeting to formally announce the new president will be tonight. Here's the link to the web-cast for future students... 545 PM EST</p>
<p>Confidentiality prevents me from disclosing who this person is... but I've worked with this person professionally and he's/she's AWESOME! I am VERY happy for HC... personal annecdotes coming! </p>
<p><a href="http://www.haverford.edu/newpresident/%5B/url%5D">http://www.haverford.edu/newpresident/</a></p>
<p>HC Alum,
D1 forwarded the community announcement this morning. Can't wait to hear more from you.</p>
<p>“Dr. Emerson comes to us from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the Francis C. Wood Professor in Medicine, Pathology and Pediatrics, as well as Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and Associate Director for Clinical/Translational Research. He graduated summa cum laude from Haverford in 1974 with a B.A. in Chemistry & Philosophy, and earned his M.Sc. in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, Ph.D. in Cell Biology & Immunology, and M.D. from Yale University. Dr. Emerson began his career at Harvard Medical School and went on to spend eight years at the University of Michigan before returning to Philadelphia in 1994 to become a professor in Medicine and Pediatrics at Penn.” </p>
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<p>OK. My random HC story is that one weekend during my residency, Steve was the covering attending for the liquid tumor service, I was the senior resident for this rotation, and there was also a medical student on the team whose Dad went to HC. What made it even more coincidental is that inpatient oncology @ Penn is housed in the beautiful marble-paneled Rhoads Pavilion, which is named after Jonathan Rhoads, a distinguished surgeon and loyal alum as well.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/people/1900s/rhoads_jonathan_e.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/people/1900s/rhoads_jonathan_e.html</a>
<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v48/n17/Rhoads.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v48/n17/Rhoads.html</a></p>
<p>We all smiled at the serendipity of this convergence of 4 generations as we rounded that morning. As a side note, Steve would later win the medicine residents’ faculty teaching award at HUP (Hospital of U Pa where there are # great teachers) and I, in that same ceremony, won the less coveted award voted by the intern class… “Least Painful Resident”… :)</p>
<p>One more random thought. It’s honored tradition at Penn for the attending MD to buy the post-call resident team breakfast during the weekends. While some faculty members embarrass themselves by skimping on stale box donuts :( , Steve was well known for respecting the residents enough to buy quality food that would put some of his colleagues to shame. When my resident friends compared their worst/ favorite list of attendings, I was always a little proud to hear that Steve was considered in high esteem.</p>
<p>His tenure at HC will be great on many levels. </p>
<p>1) As an alum, he understands the uniqueness of a HC education without it needing to be explained to him.</p>
<p>2) He also innately knows HC’s weaknesses and will push to rectify them (ie. better visual arts resources)</p>
<p>3) He’s obviously a renowned academician but, from my experience, he also respects his students. He’s such a nice guy.</p>
<p>4) It’s customary for the President to teach a class each year and having such an expert in clinical medicine, oncology, molecular bio/ biochemistry/ biophysics will expand HC’s already impressive science curriculum.</p>
<p>5) He’ll be an added resource to counsel students interested in graduate and medical school as he has done both! </p>
<p>6) For someone like him to step away from a red-hot clinical and research career (he was about to head Penn’s Institute for stem cell research) demonstrates a deep caring for the college, its students and its mission. No college can ask for more.</p>
<p>hc alum...to add to ur points he's supposed to be an incredible fundraiser and should bring a ton of money to the school</p>
<p>He wasn't chosen to be the Cancer Center Director, and head of Heme/Onc was as far as he was going to go at Penn. I must say that I was shocked to hear of this- such a big switch from academic medicine. He won't have to worry about grants anymore, but will have to worry instead about getting big $$ from donors.</p>
<p>"He wasn't chosen to be the Cancer Center Director"...
umm... curious where you heard that and why you bring that up? According to the video and my post, he was going to head the new Institute for stem cell research at Penn.</p>
<p>"and head of Heme/Onc was as far as he was going to go at Penn"...
jeez.. you make it seem like a dead end job that he serves with fries. Also, unless you are at the minimum Dr. Schafer (Chair of Medicine at Penn) or on HUP's Board of Fortune Tellers, I'm surprised that you consider yourself able to even write that.</p>
<p>Grants can be painful. Getting HC alumni to talk about the college and getting $ from us isn't rocket science. The last capital campaign occurred during 9/11 and the economic downturn. Despite that, 80% of alumni participated and over $200 million was raised for current kids. Considering there are only 12,000 alumni, that's pretty impressive. All Steve has to do is do some networking and advocating for the college, something I know he has been doing "part-time" for the last 30 years.</p>