Nominees for Faculty Organization officers

For President:

Anne Mosenthal, MD , Associate Professor, Department of Surgery

As a faculty member in the Division of Trauma/Critical Care for 12 years, I have been active at NJMS as a clinician, funded investigator and educator. While I have only recently become involved with the Faculty Organization, I have been Vice President of Board of Governors of AAUP for the last two years, advocating on behalf of the NJMS faculty to the University administration on several issues during this budget crisis, notably salary cuts, compliance and academic due process.

There continue to be many critical issues facing the faculty and NJMS, including ongoing budgetary constraints, poor faculty morale, and a lack of academic due process. All of these threaten our academic success and productivity. It is important that faculty take the lead to resolve many of these issues. As President of the Faculty Organization, I hope to increase faculty involvement and leadership both in the Faculty Organization as well as all levels of NJMS. One of our first priorities is to ensure that sound principles for academic due process are established and that faculty input for this process is welcomed. I will work with administration to develop Faculty Leadership Programs for both clinical/educator and basic science faculty. As President, I look forward to working with all the faculty and Deans to improve and build NJMS.

Robert A. Schwartz MD, MPH : Professor, Department of Medicine, Head, Dermatology

I offer seasoned leadership of stature in these troubling times. I was faculty president more than a decade ago, and have chaired FCAP and the Faculty Affairs Committee.  I have written more than 700 full articles/ book chapters, am a member of more than a dozen editorial boards, and am an honorary member of the national societies of thirteen countries in my specialty.  The second edition of my book on skin cancer was recently published by Blackwell. Most importantly, I have fought vigorously in many roles in the defense of our faculty and its interests and humbly seek your support.

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For Vice President:

Michael A. Lea, Ph.D . Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

I am grateful for the nomination to run for election as Vice President of the Faculty Organization. It is 20 years since I served as an officer of the Faculty Organization but I have tried to continue my participation in the affairs of the organization in different capacities. Over the years I have served on almost all the standing committees of the New Jersey Medical School and I have chaired three of those committees (Faculty Affairs, FCAP and CAP2).

One of the strengths of the New Jersey Medical School is that the faculty has a share in governance that is greater than at many institutions. It is important that we embrace those opportunities. The present Faculty Organization Officers have sought to expand the participation of faculty in school committees. I would like to assist in continuing that effort. Attendance at Faculty Organization meetings and service on committees has often been limited to a devoted few. We need to reach out and encourage others to participate.

A current trend in medical education is to decrease the artificial barrier between the basic and clinical sciences. Our success in meeting this challenge will be facilitated by interactions that cross departmental lines. We face changes that will require a vigorous faculty input. That can come about not only through standing committees but also through Faculty Organization task forces.

Among the problems facing the faculty is the unsatisfactory situation regarding investigational procedures and due process. The present faculty officers have sought to improve that situation. This effort must be continued. A lesson from the present year is that the faculty of the different schools can be more effective if they cooperate in presenting their opinions. I think that we need to maintain a dialog with the faculty representatives at the other schools when we see the need for improvement in any area of university activity, especially support services.

Dr. Padmini Salgame, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Centre for Emerging Pathogens; Director, Graduate Medical Research Program .

    I have been an independent principal investigator for the past 15 years and my core research interests include studying host immune responses to tuberculosis. During this tenure, I have been the recipient of several federal grants from the National Institutes of Health. The execution of these projects involved mentoring of numerous masters and graduate students, as well as Post Doctoral researchers - who are all well placed in their respective careers. These efforts have also been rewarded by the publication of a number of articles in leading scientific journals. Being an integral member of the NJMS Faculty, I have been closely associated with teaching immunology as a science to many students. This involved interacting with the students on a one-to-one basis, thereby enriching their research and academic interests. As a person being actively involved in science, I also serve on NIH peer-review study sections and I am a member of the editorial boards of several principal scientific journals. In my administrative capacity, I have been extensively involved with many of the committees at NJMS and have played host to a multitude of scientific conferences. Evidently, I am very committed towards strengthening research avenues and promoting higher education at NJMS. Personally, I believe in �participative leadership�, an attribute that positions me well to serve as your collective voice to the administration. I have been at NJMS for only six years-an advantage-since it will allow me to implement new ideas without the encumbrances of the past. Clearly, my candidature is highly suitable for the office of the Vice President of the Faculty Organization.

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For Faculty Council At-Large:

Chirag D. Gandhi MD

The Department of Neurological Surgery has a history of service on the Faculty Council. As the department's nominee I believe that I would serve on the post with enthusiasm and would very much appreciate the opportunity.

EMANUEL GOLDMAN -

Having served continuously on Faculty Council since 1999 (including terms as Vice-President [2003-04] and President [2004-05] of the Faculty Organization), as well as three prior 2-yr terms on Faculty Council (1987, 1992, and 1995), I bring to the Council a history of service to the faculty and institutional memory spanning over the past 22 years. During my term as President, I confronted a dysfunctional IRB that was unjustifiably choking legitimate research endeavors by the faculty, and my efforts contributed to reforms and improvements (although my sources tell me that not all IRB-related problems have been solved). I have also served the faculty by continuous participation on the AAUP Board of Governors (since 1985) and AAUP Council of Chapters (since 1995), including two terms as Treasurer [1995, 1996] and two terms as President [1997, 1998] of the Newark Chapter.

The issue of the day is clearly the non-academic approach of the present UMDNJ leadership regarding investigations and discipline of alleged faculty misconduct. I support the efforts of our present faculty leadership in trying to rectify this unacceptable behavior by the UMDNJ administration. If re-elected, I intend to continue to support these efforts at reform, and to continue to fight for faculty rights whenever and however they are threatened.

Evelyn Montalvo

As a UMDNJ alumni and faculty member of the Pediatric department, I have a vested interested in the medical school regarding policies and procedures pertaining to all academic matters. The decisions made by the faculty council are important to the structure and the future development of the medical school which can be changed by providing recommendations to the Board of Trustees and University administration. I envision a brighter future for the medical school with many new changes to come and would like to be part of this decision making as a faculty council member representing the Pediatric Department.

Tolga Taneli

I joined the ranks of faculty at NJMS in 2005, after having established a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit in Northern Maine , where no child psychiatrist had ever practiced before. It was a challenge in its own right and it taught me what a determined people can do with few resources. I had trained on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, at Mt. Sinai Medical Center , doing first a general psychiatry residency (1994-1998), then a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship (2000), and finally a year of Clinical Psychopharmacology Research Fellowship (2001). I received distinctions as �The Ralph Kaufman, M.D. Memorial Award for Outstanding Resident� and �The Richard L. Scharf, M.D. Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence� on graduation from residency. I am triple-boarded in my specialties (General Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine.)

I am a graduate of Robert College of Istanbul (1987) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_College ) and of Uludag University (1994) ( http://www.uludag.edu.tr ).

I am a passionate educator, now serving as Director and Training Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I am also in the trenches, doing general and child psychiatric emergency room work.

Probably much like many of us here, my research career is on hiatus, while I juggle more tasks than ever. As a Faculty Council member, I would like to elaborate the core missions of UMDNJ as an academic institution. This includes clinical care that we can be proud to refer our friends and family to, medical student and resident education that is second to none, and a rigorous research agenda that has as much footing in the clinical sciences, as it does in the basic. This means promoting our priorities and vigorously defending the resources that we need to realize them. I am cognizant, these are lofty goals, but as David Allen says in his book: �Getting Things Done,� we must �visualize wild success!�

Ellen Townes-Anderson, PhD

As this year's President of the Faculty Organization I would like to continue to be involved in discussions of school governance. I have learned a lot over the past few years and feel that I can be helpful, when necessary, by encouraging solutions to problems that are in the best interests of the faculty as well as the school as a whole.