Amid roiling faculty anger over drastic budget cuts, the University of Miami announced the number two 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 said: “Last year we had many challenging issues to fix, as do many medical schools in the U.S. Thanks to Jack Lord’s leadership and hard work by everyone at the Miller School, we have met those challenges and turned things around financially. Our medical center is strong and well positioned for the future.”
Goldschmidt in a letter to faculty thanked Lord’s help in restructuring the medical school’s 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 chief innovation officer at Humana, became the medical school’s chief operating officer last March. He was deeply involved in a series of drastic changes, including laying off about 900 full-time and part-time employees in the spring. Lord will be temporarily replaced by Joe Natoli, UM’s chief financial officer.
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 said faculty “fear is widespread within the school. They cited instances in which someone suffered retribution for criticizing the school’s administration. ... Faculty with alternatives are leaving.”
UM did not immediately 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 anonymous sources have 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.”
The petition states: “Under the current leadership, there has been a major shift in the mission of the schools that we feel jeopardizes our educational, clinical and research enterprises. The deterioration of the relationship with Jackson Memorial Hospital fundamentally threatens both our graduate and undergraduate medical education programs without which the school of medicine cannot exist.”
A half-dozen persons closely connected to the medical school who requested anonymity told The Herald that they’ve heard that between 400 and 600 of the school’s 1,200 faculty have added their names to individual copies of the petition.
