“Advance the Research Mission: 2005-2011,” the title of the six-year plan VCU’s Board of Visitors approved last Thursday, calls for increased international awareness of VCU’s School of Medicine and improved standards of health care for Central Virginians.
“It will change the nature of our medical school,” VCU President Eugene P. Trani told the board in urging every member to ratify the proposal.
Dr. Sheldon Retchin, vice president for VCU Health Sciences and CEO of VCU’s Health System, said the medical school will rely on “good old-fashioned science” to expand its programs and reputation during a PowerPoint presentation to the board.
Thomas G. Rosenthal, chairman of the board’s academic and health-affairs policy committee, said the plan scrupulously articulates an outline for financial management and a reorganization of assets and gifts.
Major goals for the School of Medicine listed in the plan include hiring more than 100 additional full-time junior and senior faculty members and obtaining more research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Renovating and constructing several buildings on the Medical Center campus also are on the agenda.
At the same meeting, E. Janet Riddick, chairwoman of the board’s student affairs committee, asked that the committee’s proposed legislation to double the number of student representatives to the board be voted on at the next meeting. If approved, the board would have one student representative from each Richmond campus.
Zmarak Kahn, the Monroe Park Campus student government president, said the idea behind this change in the board’s bylaws arose because the Monroe Park and the Medical Center’s student government representatives know only the needs of their own constituents.
The administration, he said, has argued that the SGA presidents of the two campuses should meet to discuss issues, but one president is not accountable to the other. Therefore, an underrepresented campus cannot guarantee that its concerns would be reported to the board.
One plan would allow students from each campus to elect a representative to the board. Another would automatically endorse the two SGA presidents as representatives.
As it is now, the provost’s office compiles a list of eligible students from which the board chooses a delegate. According to the student affairs committee proposal, that process provides an administrational filter that decides who can represent the students.
“Would I want the faculty representative (to the Board of Visitors) to have to go through the students?” asked Kahn illustrating his point. “No. I think they should be elected by the faculty.”
The board meets again on May 20, when the members are expected to discuss the proposed student-representation amendment.