Having trained most of the ophthalmologists now practicing in Mississippi, Johnson had established a residency program recognized as one of the most competitive in the nation. Dr. C.J. Chen has since replaced Johnson as department chairman. Heath, a native of Grenada, had been on the faculty since 1978 after finishing a cardiothoracic surgery residency at the medical center. Except for the losses of Dr. Johnson and Dr. Heath to unfortunate water accidents, the only real leadership change has been because of the retirement of Dr. Robertson, the No. 2 person, at the end of this year, said Conerly. Times of adjustment are always tension producing because of the unknown aspects of change, Drabman said.
Tension usually returns to equilibrium when the change is known, understood and complete.
In July, Conerly announced the appointments of Dr. John Ellis Moffitt, chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Pediatrics, as associate dean for graduate medical education, and Dr. Steven T. Case, professor of biochemistry, as associate dean for admissions. In the newly created position of associate dean for graduate medical education, Moffitt, a Mississippi College graduate who earned his M.D. and completed a pediatrics residency at UMC, and joined the medical center faculty in 1987 after completing an allergy and immunology fellowship at the Medical College of Georgia, oversees the 32 programs in which physicians train for specialty certification at the university hospitals and clinics. Case, who earned a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and served as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Biology at Yale before joining UMC faculty in 1979, chairs the Medical School Admissions Committee, the group of basic science and clinical faculty that reviews M.D. program applicants. He takes over the duties from Dr. Virginia H. Read, former associate professor of pathology and biochemistry, who retired earlier this year. Since UMC opened in 1955 as a teaching hospital for all medical center education programs, it has evolved into one of the larger economic development tools in the metro area and the state.