Inaugural Address
Dr. Francis J. Tedesco, President
May 5, 1989
Governor Harris, Mayor Devaney, Father Costigan,
Chairman Greene, Chancellor Propst, distinguished members of the Georgia
legislature, students, faculty, honored guests, delegates, friends, and
family:
The presidency of the Medical College of Georgia is
a great honor and responsibility. I, therefore, accept appointment as the
sixth president both with a sobering sense of historical duty and an
exhilarating sense of future challenge. I intend to dedicate all my energies
to fulfilling the public purpose of this university.
On this symbolic occasion, it is most fitting for the
academic community and our friends to join us as we recount our heritage,
consider our contemporary status, and ponder our collective future.
This nation and all its institutions are steeped in
historic metaphors. When the pioneers came to these shores they regarded
themselves as the “chosen” people. They saw themselves leaving a land of
bondage, safely crossing the turbulent sea, and entering a new wilderness to
be explored and subdued as the promised land.
True to their own metaphors, the American pioneers
relentlessly explored the frontiers and subdued the wilderness with
institutions that reflected their worldview.
Slowly this wilderness frontier mentality was displaced
by a cultivated academic mentality. The early academic institutions of this
country were designed to include a central green or commons with a
surrounding quadrangle of buildings.
The central commons was intended as an academic
metaphor of paradise. Here apart from the wilderness—true
community, true knowledge, and learning were to be found and cultivated. It
is significant that in these early American institutions, the academic
concentration was heavily theological and the health professions were
conspicuously absent.
It was not until 1765 that the first colonial medical
school was chartered in Philadelphia. Dr. Benjamin Rush, the revolutionary
hero, was a member of the founding faculty of that embryo of the University
of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Rush was a mentor to Dr. Milton Anthony, the
founding father of the Medical College of Georgia.
Following the War of 1812, medical schools began to
proliferate. Many were independent proprietary schools with the most meager
facilities and resources. Medical education only gradually evolved as part
of a comprehensive university or as a free standing health sciences
university.
In its own history, the Medical College of Georgia has
experienced this transition from the pioneer wilderness to a modern
academic health center. The Medical College of Georgia was established in
1828 as an independent proprietary school.
Through a slow, tenuous, sometimes stormy, and often
painful process, men and women of vision and courage created the scholarly
climate that has made the Medical College of Georgia the health sciences
university of the University System of Georgia. Today, the Medical College
of Georgia is pleased to be numbered among the research universities of the
university system.
We are proud to be a part of a system of education that
has made collegiate education available, affordable, and accessible to all
Georgians. We are particularly happy with the current emphasis on quality.
We welcome Governor Harris’ challenge to excellence
in education.
We applaud Chairman Greene’s call for competitive
performance in higher education to benefit all Georgians.
We endorse his global vision for the future.
We deeply appreciate Chancellor Propst’s advocacy for
developing the human capital of the state of Georgia.
We thank our legislative leaders for their support and
good will as we strive for excellence in an age marked with mediocrity.
To again employ the historic American metaphor: Have
we now reached the promised land? Are we now in academic paradise? If
so, to our surprise and amazement, this paradise is not a place of
tranquility, or of static status quo. It is a bubbling, intellectual
community of thinkers. Scholars, dreamers, and doers dedicated to the
discovery, preservation and transmission of knowledge, wisdom, skills, and
values. It is a channel for continuity and an instrument for change. It is
in this context that we are here today to welcome the challenge of the
future.
Today, in the area of research, we are pleased that the
Medical College of Georgia is presently engaged in over 200 funded projects
covering over 40 health-related problems. Extramural research support has
increased by 51% since 1984. We expect to see a doubling of that amount in
the next 10 years and another doubling in the decade beyond.
Special initiative funding is assisting us in
attracting new research scholars as well as providing essential seed money
for pilot studies in critical areas.
Today, in the area of education, we are pleased with
our well-deserved reputation for graduating competent and caring clinicians.
Our graduates are annually judged by outside licensing bodies and advanced
program directors from all over the country. They report that our graduates
are extremely will prepared as new health care professionals.
Today, in the area of service, we are pleased that we
are providing empathic and state-of-the-art care to many of the citizens of
Georgia.
But with our satisfaction, we harbor a “divine
discontent.”
We intend to expand our research into the causes of
disease and its cure, as well as the way people care for their own health,
and the way students learn, master skills, develop judgment, and establish
values.
We intend to gain and maintain a regional and national
reputation in research. It is within the larger context of Georgia’s
continued economic development and in full cooperation with our sister
institutions that we intend to fulfill this mission.
We intend to continue to improve the quality and types
of health manpower. We see changes in the health care environment that call
for serious changes in curriculum and teaching styles. Disease patterns are
changing, delivery systems are evolving, payment mechanisms are under
serious review, and profound ethical dilemmas confront us.
We will address these changes in our teaching and
training. Furthermore, in the area of education, our intention includes
assuring that black students, black faculty and staff are fully represented
in our school and programs.
We intend to continue to broaden our clinical skills
and the range of health care services available to the people of Georgia. We
shall not be content until the knowledge explosion and advances in science
and technology have been fully employed in applied research, in the
classroom, and in the clinics and hospital.
These intentions are already being translated into
visible action. This legislative session saw the approval of the bonds for
our ambulatory care and specialized care center. This will not only allow us
to provide a more efficient educational environment, but will allow us the
opportunity to provide more convenient and responsive health care. We thank
the Board of Regents, the governor, and the general assembly for this vote
of confidence in our future.
This building project is the cornerstone of a two
decade campus master plan that includes the early development of a
children’s medical center. These two clinical facilities will not only
provide stat-of-the-art facilities and technologies for health care delivery
but will provide for greater interdisciplinary cooperation in teaching and
in clinical research.
Biomedical education and health care delivery are both
high touch and high tech activities. The advances in technology do not
relieve us of the responsibility for establishing and maintaining rapport
with our students and our patients.
The labor “saved” through technology must be
focused upon enhancing empathic student/teacher relationships, upon
improving the interpersonal aspects of patient care, and upon resolving the
economic and ethical issues created by our newly acquired ability to
intervene in the course of human existence by improving health and extending
life.
Beyond using today’s technology to solve today’s
problems, we are charged with developing and perfecting tomorrow’s
technologies with today’s science.
Without question, state-of-the-art biomedical research
and health care delivery are capital and labor intensive. However, they are
also benefit intensive. Now life can be improved as well as extended. The
value to society of an extended and enriched life greatly exceeds the cost
of the investment.
This is an investment in which we must all participate:
the university with its talent and energies, government with adequate
funding for its human agenda, business with its risk capital, and industry
with its capacity for innovation and production.
To meet these goals of the Medical College of Georgia
will require additional resources, even deeper resolve, further commitment,
and greater and more effective effort. Nevertheless, I am optimistic about
tomorrow since:
We are part of this great state of Georgia.
We have a governor, a chancellor, a Board of
Regents, and a general assembly committed to providing all the citizens of
Georgia with the opportunities to be full partners and active players in
Georgia’s economic growth and development.
We have alumni who are committed to their
alma mater and are willing to work in assuring that we reach even greater
effectiveness.
We have citizens from all over Georgia who
not only are touched by the Medical College of Georgia by having their
sons and daughters receive their education here, but who are aware that we
provide health care support that extends to all the people of Georgia.
Finally I am optimistic about tomorrow
because we have a highly committed and eager student body, a highly
competent and dedicated faculty and support personnel who comprise the
Medical College of Georgia family.
With the continued support of these constituents and
with the benediction from above, the Medical College of Georgia will be on
the frontiers of research, of knowledge, and of patient care. As the public
health sciences university for Georgia we will strive in the future as in
the past to transform the frontier into a cultivated garden of
opportunity for all Georgians.
Thank
you for the honor and opportunity.
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