Amid roiling faculty anger over drastic budget cuts, the University of Miami announced that the No. 2 executive at the Miller School of Medicine, Jack Lord, is stepping down.
The change, announced by Dean Pascal Goldschmidt, comes as a petition circulates among tenured medical school faculty expressing no confidence in both Goldschmidt and Lord.
In a statement Thursday, Goldschmidt defended his administrations performance: Last year we had many challenging issues to fix, as do many medical schools in the U.S. Thanks to Jack Lords leadership and hard work by everyone at the Miller School, we have met those challenges and turned things around financially.The announcement comes after a tumultuous year in which the medical school suffered a severe financial crisis and its leaders responded with a major overhaul that included the layoffs last spring of over 900 full-time and part-time employees moves that angered many professors.
In a letter to faculty sent on Wednesday, Goldschmidt insisted the problems have been fixed.Goldschmidt credited Lord for helping improve the medical schools finances, which showed a surplus of about $9 million for the first six months of this fiscal year compared to a $24 million loss for the first six months of the previous fiscal year.
Lord, a physician who had been an executive at Humana, became chief operating officer last March, as the restructuring plans started. He will be temporarily replaced by Joe Natoli, UMs chief financial officer. The shakeup continued on Thursday when the medical school also announced that Sheri Keitz, the chief human resources officer during the layoff decisions, was being assigned to other duties.
Many faculty members, who had spent decades at the medical school without seeing mass layoffs, were angry that the cuts were made without consulting them. A report by a faculty senate committee said medical school professors described the layoffs as unprofessional, graceless and heartless.
The report contended that the internal turmoil had prompted some faculty members to consider leaving and that fear is widespread. It also cited instances of employees suffering retribution for criticizing the administration.
UM did not respond to a request for comment about the report on Thursday. Last May, President Donna Shalala, a veteran administrator at several universities, said tradition-bound faculty often complained when tough changes needed to be made.
Associate Professor Sam Terilli, head of the committee that wrote the interim report in late August, said last week that a follow-up report is being prepared, but said it was too soon to offer details of what it would say.
Meanwhile, several sources sent The Herald a copy of a petition being circulated among school faculty members who wish to express, in the strongest possible terms, the concern we feel for the future for our school of medicine. The petition blamed the failed leadership of Pascal Goldschmidt and Jack Lord. ... We want to make clear that the faculty has lost confidence in the ability of these men to lead the school.
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