LEADERSHIP Toward a Bright Tomorrow Each new academic year begins with both challenge and hope. Photo: Stephanie Diani including Clarence Braddock, MD, as vice dean for education, There’s something special about the beginning of a new academic year, a reminder of how critical education is to reflect renewed energy and a spirit of new ideas as we steer our ongoing success. The arrival of new house staff, medical into the future. students and graduate students inspires great confidence This new era is embodied in the Teaching and Learning in our future. Today we have cause for supreme confidence. Center for the Health Sciences, a 110,000-square-foot state- We continue to recruit stellar students, residents and fellows. of-the-art education building for which we broke ground in Interest among medical-school applicants continues to grow, September 2013. As the construction takes recognizable shape, with a 20-percent increase in applications. The David Geffen exciting conversations have begun about the new programs Medical Scholarships and Leaders-of-Tomorrow Scholarship and teaching methods that this building will foster. Even as we have ushered in a new era that enables many of our students await the opening of this new facility, in Fall 2016, we continue to pursue their passions unencumbered by medical-school to advance the infrastructure for medical education, including debt. Our Graduate Programs in Bioscience (GPB) consortium the opening of our new Simulation Center and the migration to recruited 65 outstanding students to make up the first GPB class. a leading-edge residency-management IT system. Additionally, GPB piloted a summer program for undergraduate Finally, in June 2014, we received our eight-year research to promote the transition of underrepresented students re-accreditation by the Liaison Committee for Medical into UCLA bioscience graduate programs. Education. This critical certification validates the strength In the area of graduate medical and continuing medical education, UCLA Health launched this year the Healthcare Improvement Institute, a program to engage our house staff of our medical-education programs and the dedicated work of our faculty, staff and education-leadership team. As I reflect on the path forward for our academic enterprise, and faculty in the cultural transformation of healthcare delivery even as we acknowledge the many challenges ahead, I am through quality-improvement education and project improvement. confident and reassured by our fantastic students and And our trainees continued to distinguish themselves dynamic programs that our future indeed is quite bright. as emerging leaders in health and science. MD and MD/ PhD students mentored by our faculty received a number of prestigious awards, including predoctoral fellowships from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and several medical students A. Eugene Washington, MD, MSc have been nationally recognized for their leadership and service. Vice Chancellor, UCLA Health Sciences Dean, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Gerald S. Levey, MD, Endowed Chair Recent leadership of our educational enterprise catalyzed broad, campus-wide discussions of the future of medical and graduate education. New leadership recruitments, U MAGAZINE 1