This just in

One of the dubious pleasures of editing a magazine is taking an issue that is ready to go to print and remaking it because news has broken. The pleasure is doubtful because once an article, a headline or a layout is complete in the eyes of the person who created it, there is an almost irresistible force that seems to say, “Don’t change a thing.”

But change was the modus operandi at the School of Medicine during May and June this year. The largest building ever constructed on the medical campus was dedicated in May, and news followed soon after that benefactors A. John Anlyan, B.S. ’42, M.D. ’45, and Betty Jane Anlyan had increased their gift to Yale so significantly that the entire 457,000-square-foot complex would be named in their honor. What had been a two-page follow-up to our Winter 2003 article, “The Big Move,” became this issue’s cover story (“A New Space for Science”). We added four pages to the issue to accommodate more photos and to show the progression of the building’s construction over the past three years.

Then on June 23 came another news flash, that Dean David A. Kessler, M.D., had accepted an offer from the University of California, San Francisco, to become vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the UCSF School of Medicine. Appointed in 1997, Kessler presided over the medical school during a period of major change, an era capped by the opening of The Anlyan Center. Even bigger challenges await him in San Francisco, where UCSF has begun building a phased, 43-acre life sciences campus in the city’s Mission Bay district. We wish him well.

Yale President Richard C. Levin has appointed Dennis D. Spencer, M.D., HS ’77, as interim dean effective July 1 pending a search for a permanent successor. Spencer, who figures prominently in one of this issue’s feature stories (“High Resolution”) and was profiled in the Fall 1998 issue of Yale Medicine, is the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery. We’ll follow up on this story with an interview with the new interim dean in our Autumn issue. Meanwhile, rest assured that even during the hazy, lazy days of summer, there is never a dull moment on Cedar Street.