New med school dean brings experience, controversy

Dr. Michael Rosenblatt, a Harvard Medical School professor, will assume his new role as Dean of Tufts School of Medicine On Nov. 1. His responsibilities will also include overseeing the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.

The Tufts administration eagerly welcomed the new dean in an e-mail sent out to students over the summer. "[Rosenblatt] will be a strong academic and intellectual leader who will work with us to take the medical school to the next level," announced President Bacow.

As Dean, Rosenblatt has aspirations to advance Tufts' Medical School to its fullest potential. Rosenblatt plans to examine each of the key areas in which the medical school is active -- education, research, and clinical medicine -- by assessing the strengths of and building upon each of those areas. He said he will "take these strengths and find where we can make our most important contributions in medicine."

According to Rosenblatt, these goals can only be achieved through a collaborative effort. "I want to involve as many people as I can in the process. Hopefully by receiving input, we can decide how to implement our top priorities for the Tufts community and society at large."

Though Tufts is readily awaiting the new dean's arrival, his hiring did include some controversy. In his most recent position as President of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center -- one of Harvard's teaching hospitals --, the hospital suffered from financial difficulties which eventually led to his resignation.

Rosenblatt explained that the hospital's poor financial status was due to the huge operating losses and massive deficits from which the hospital was already suffering at the time of his takeover.

Despite those problems, Rosenblatt said his team was able to mitigate the situation and "turn over the hospital to the next leadership team in a much better condition." Though Rosenblatt could not find a pharmaceutical company to partner with Beth Israel, the search continued after his resignation.

Shortly after Rosenblatt left, Robert Melzer, former interim chief executive of Beth Israel, told The Boston Herald, "He's done an excellent job under very difficult circumstances."

In Bacow's opinion, the financial catastrophe did not taint Rosenblatt's respectable record. Bacow told TheBoston Globe, "It's a very different skill set to run a major hospital than to be an effective dean of a medical school."

Due to Rosenblatt's extensive contributions to Boston's medical community, he is no stranger to Tufts Medical School faculty. In the past, Rosenblatt has trained with, worked with, and even taught a number of his future colleagues at Tufts.

Another of Rosenblatt's priorities is to improve collaboration with Tufts' teaching hospitals. "Teaching hospitals are our partners, their success is our success, we share a common mission," he explained.

During his eight years at Merck, a pharmaceutical company, Rosenblatt co-led a development team for the osteoporosis drug FOSAMAX and directed worldwide drug discovery efforts in molecular biology, bone biology, calcium metabolism, virology, cancer research, and cardiovascular research. Through these projects, Rosenblatt said he "learned how effective people can be when they work as a team towards a common goal."

He later joined the Harvard faculty, serving as director of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Faculty Dean and Senior Vice President for Academic Programs at CareGroup (the parent company of Beth Israel), and President of Beth Israel.

Through these positions, Rosenblatt realized the significance of finding innovative ways to educate students despite the enormous pressures of "in the field" training. "I have learned a great deal from all of my job experiences," Rosenblatt said.

Rosenblatt is currently chief of the bone and mineral research division of Beth Israel Deaconess and is anxious to begin at Tufts. Dr. Rosenblatt will also relocate his research lab in bone and mineral metabolism to Tufts. "This is an extraordinarily exciting time for biomedical sciences because modern technologies are ready to be translated to benefit human relations."

Rosenblatt said he is eager to get to work in November. "I'm really thrilled with the opportunity to join the faculty at Tufts and serve in a leadership role. I think there is tremendous quality at Tufts Medical School and I really like the spirit of the place. I am really looking forward to working together with the highly talented and wonderful people there," he said.