On one of the colder evenings of an unusually warm winter, dozens of faculty, faculty emeriti, and department chairs gathered in Yale School of Medicine (YSM)’s Medical Historical Library to shake hands with the new dean and raise their glasses to the former dean.
The affair was comfortable and familiar, with Nancy J. Brown, MD, the Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Medicine and C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine, mingling and chatting with her new colleagues. She said she begins her journey as dean with YSM in “an incredible place, due largely to the leadership of Bob Alpern.” Robert J. Alpern, MD, Ensign Professor of Medicine and professor of cellular and molecular physiology, partook in the festivities, basking in the glow of 15 years’ efforts successfully handed over to a capable and competent successor. With that, one era was over, and another began.