Happy Holidays to all, as 2022 comes to an end. We have had many difficult years recently, and yet 2022 brought challenges that I certainly wasn’t expecting. We’ve “come back to normal” – and yet many chose not to come back to their old jobs, to in-person work, to the University. Those who did were covering their own work, and that of others. Difficult enough under the best of circumstances; so much harder when everyone is stressed, stretched, and less thoughtful and gracious towards each other.
So I am going to end my year by telling those who have worked with me to support the MD/PhD Program how grateful I am to you. For the student emails that were answered at night and on the weekends. For the road trips to pick up lunches for student meetings when the restaurants were too busy to deliver. For the resilience training, the wellness programming, the de-stress teas and cookies during “prep for Step”. For the fellowship applications that you read and helped edit; for the scheduled (and ad hoc) advising meetings you had; for the courses that you helped develop; for the classes that you taught. For your advocacy on behalf of the students.
The pictures at the start of this email are from our annual Holiday Party earlier this month: you’ll see students, entries of competition “cookie art” by our houses, a welcome chance to see friends and classmates in person. And yet the picture that means the most to me is the one with my administrative colleagues: Kayla McKay, already rocking it just halfway through her first season as Admissions and Pipeline Coordinator; Reiko Fitzsimonds, working to keep the program on a steady course no matter what fate throws our way; Sue Sansone, graciously joining us part-time to keep us all laughing while we deal with being short-staffed for way too long now; and Alex Mauzerall, somehow doing her own job (grants and budgets and financials), the vacant Registrar job – and whatever job title belongs to the person who’s asked to (re)solve all of the problems that happen when someone else at the University gets things wrong for one of our students. Your jobs are so hard: when you do everything perfectly, no one seems to notice. When something goes wrong, your fault or not, you get all the complaints.
So before the year comes to a close, let me say thank you, for the care and worry and hard work that you give to our MD/PhD program and its students.
I also want to thank the many faculty across the University who teach, mentor and support our students. I’m particularly grateful to Angeliki Louvi, the program’s Deputy Director, who works with our students from soup (uh, admissions) to nuts (that would be graduation!) – and Fred Gorelick, deputy director of the program for so many years that it is hard to imagine us without his insight and wisdom, which he thankfully continues to share. I will miss Tamar Taddei’s clear thinking and diplomatic voice, and am glad that Lauren Cohn will be there to look out for our students’ interests in the coming years. The program’s associate directors keep me (as well as their student advisees) on the straight and narrow, while always reminding me that there is joy to be found in this work that we do. Thank you, Drs. Rogers, Nitabach, Aronson, Vilharinho, Cappello and Higley! And to the faculty who teach our flagship first year MD/PhD course – Drs. Bogan, Konnikova and Katz – thank you for introducing our students to this life we share as physician-scientists.
Cheers,
Barbara
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Barbara Kazmierczak, PhD, MD
Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Research Foundation MD-PhD Program Director Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and of Microbial Pathogenesis
Vice Chair for Basic Research, Internal Medicine
Submitted by Reiko Fitzsimonds on December 19, 2022