TULANE TALK

July 25, 2007

Good Morning:

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Benjamin Sachs from Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will become senior vice president (SVP) and dean of Tulane’s School of Medicine, effective November 1, 2007.

Ben is currently the Harold H. Rosenfield Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Harvard Medical School and a professor in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Ben also chairs one of the Executive Committees of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of Harvard Medical School and was recently president of the Beth Israel Deaconess Physician Organization, which includes 1,500 physicians.

As this http release indicates Ben has been at Harvard University since 1978 and is an internationally recognized and respected scholar, educator, administrator and clinician. His track record of accomplishment and experience make him ideally suited for this position.

As SVP and dean, Ben will become a member of the President’s Cabinet and report directly to me. In his role as dean, he will also have a reporting relationship to Provost Michael Bernstein with respect to academic matters. Consistent with the new structure, the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine will also report to the provost, thus aligning all university academic matters under the Office of the Provost.

In his role as SVP, Ben will have overall responsibility for a portfolio of medically-related activities, including the Primate Center, our Joint Venture with HCA, the student health centers, and other public and private partnerships with universities and agencies. However, to ensure that we have a unified vision and strategy for the health sciences across the university, we are forming the Health Science Leadership Council (HSLC). The core membership of the HSLC will consist of the provost; the SVP and dean of the School of Medicine; the dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine; the director of the Primate Center; the dean of the School of Science and Engineering and the associate SVP for Research. The HSLC will be the university’s administrative leadership team for the health sciences.

This leadership team shares my vision to build a world-class health science enterprise, which will draw on all of the university’s strengths and be an integrative theme and distinctive characteristic of Tulane. We clearly have the people and structure in place for this vision to become a reality.

Ben, as an integral part of this team, will begin the transitioning process in August. I want to take this opportunity to thank both Alan Miller and Lee Hamm for their performance in their interim roles. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for their commitment and dedication. We look forward to many more years of their contributions to Tulane University.

I also want to thank the Search Advisory Committee, so ably led by Yvette Jones and staffed by Anne Banos, for the remarkable job they did in guiding this process. The end result speaks to the quality of the committee’s work.

Finally, I hope you will all join me in welcoming Ben Sachs to the Tulane community. We look forward to his success and leadership and an even brighter future for the School of Medicine, all of the health science units, and the entire university.