R EACHING O UT University of Utah Health Sciences Center 2003 DONOR REPORT Table of C ONTENTS 2 I NTRODUCTION A. Lorris Betz, M.D., Ph.D. Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, and Dean, School of Medicine 4 P ROFILES IN P HILANTHROPY Webster Jee, Ph.D. Emma Eccles Jones Robert Rice 10 I N R EVIEW School of Medicine College of Pharmacy College of Health College of Nursing University Hospitals & Clinics Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library 16 O UTREACH 22 P ASSAGES 24 E NDOWED C HAIRS 27 D ONOR R EPORT 66 O RGANIZATIONS M ISSION S TATEMENT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER SUPPORTS THE MISSION AND VISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH AND SERVES THE PUBLIC BY IMPROVING HEALTH AND QUALITY OF LIFE THROUGH EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION, RESEARCH AND CLINICAL CARE. We educate competent and caring practitioners, educators and scientists for the state of Utah and beyond. We advance knowledge through innovative basic and clinical research and scholarship and translate our discoveries into applications that help people. We provide compassionate, state-of-the art clinical care to our patients. We anticipate and respond to the needs of our communities through outreach, advocacy and service. Introduction Our goal as a Health Sciences Center is to have a healthy impact on our city, state, region and world. In fact, part of our mission statement reads, “We anticipate and respond to the needs of our communities 2 through outreach, advocacy and service.” The theme for the 2003 annual report is outreach. What is covered here, however, only provides a flavor; it doesn’t begin to tell the entire story. For purposes of this annual report, we define outreach as an activity or program that reaches off campus and benefits people and the communities in which they live. Most of those people and communities are in Utah and the Intermountain West. The first priority of any outreach effort is to bring services, goods and support to people and areas that need them. It is also an opportunity, in some cases, for health-care providers to further their research and increase their medical knowledge. Statistics show that students and providers who choose to spend part of their time honing skills in medically needy areas become better at what they do because they learn to function without ready access to the latest techniques and equipment. They also become much more likely to make community service part of their lives. 3 You will read about efforts that the Health Sciences Center supports, services that are made possible by outside grants, and programs that exist only because University employees go into the community to raise funds and form necessary alliances. Outreach is an activity that benefits all participants. It is service at its broadest and best. A. LORRIS B ETZ, M.D., PH .D. Senior Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean, School of Medicine P ROFILES IN P HILANTHROPY Soft-spoken and given to self-deprecation, Webster Jee sits in his office that surrounds him with personal and professional memories from a lifetime of accomplishments. When asked about his successes he will acknowledge them, tell you about them, but somewhere in his answer he will attribute it all to serendipity. But there are too many accomplishments to believe that it is all luck. In fact, very little was. Mostly it was a keen mind combined with a work ethic honed from childhood. e grew up in Oakland, California, in a “Chinese ghetto” which he describes as a “very close Chinese community.” H His childhood was overseen, with a firm hand, by his mother, and education consisted of public schools followed by two hours of Chinese School. Old customs and knowledge were taught there and Jee admits that sometimes the biggest challenge was staying awake. Jee’s ticket to the broader world of Northern California was his height. In this day of seven-foot Chinese players in the NBA, it’s hard to realize that his 5 foot 10 inch height would lead to a stellar basketball career. He was the star of both his 4 community and high school varsity basketball teams. Road trips were more than just another game, they were the seeds for what would later become a lifelong love for traveling the world and visiting friends. If there were some true serendipity in his life it involved his military service. When he finished high school in 1943, World War II was at its peak and Jee went into the service. He ended up in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 navigator, but his training took an abnormally long time to complete. As a result, when he finally got his wings the war was over. He was discharged in 1946, having seen several parts of the country, including the deep south, and coming home with the certain knowledge that he wanted to obtain a college education. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. While visiting friends in Utah, Jee decided he liked the area and wondered if there were any jobs available. He landed a research assistant position in Anatomy and Radiobiology and began working on a Ph.D. Eight years later he had the Ph.D and a reputation, while still a U student, as the world authority on the toxicity of atom bombs and nuclear power plants. Another extraordinary eight years of research and teaching followed and by 1967 he was a full professor and an interna- tional expert on hard tissue diseases and cures. A Major Mentor Webster Jee, Ph.D. Financial Supporter of Hard Tissue Just as meteoric as his academic ascension was Jee’s growing reputation as a researcher. Breakthrough followed breakthrough in the area of hard tissue. His work led to Research medications that add bone to the skeleton, helping in the treatment of osteoporosis and Paget’s disease. Many of his students and disciples are now world renown in the field of bone biology. For 29 years he has been the force behind and the vision for the Sun Valley Workshop. He brings in young investigators from all over the world to mingle with international experts 5 in the hard tissue field. Initially, the attendance was limited to 50, but the demand became so great, it currently hosts 150 participants. The week-long conference has a variety of supporters. Jee himself set up a fund in his late wife Alice’s name to help defray costs for young investigators to attend the conference. From this workshop have sprung other internationally known gatherings including the International Chinese Hard Tissue Society. Jee is the chair of the Board of Directors. These days, at 78, Jee says he is slowing down and traveling only to conferences that allow him to see old friends. He continues to mentor post-doctoral students and is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Musculoskeletal and Neuronal Interactions. He says the quarterly needs some improvement “so we can get better quality papers to publish.” In the case of Web Jee, slow is like serendipity. He says it, but it doesn’t mean the listener has to believe it. P ROFILES IN P HILANTHROPY When you are one of nine siblings it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, particularly when four of your brothers are Marriner, George, Willard and Spencer Eccles. Her famous brothers may have been better known, but Emma Eccles Jones blazed her own, meaningful trail. er youth was not necessarily nomadic, but she did get around. She was born in Baker, Oregon, moved to Logan, H Utah, at age seven, then back to Oregon near the rough and tumble life of a lumber camp and back to Logan. While in Utah she attended Utah State, then off to Radcliff College, out to the University of California at Berkeley for an undergraduate degree, back to Teachers College at Columbia University in New York for a master’s degree in progressive education and then back to Logan. She had a driving enthusiasm for early childhood education. “Her interest was probably not so much in teaching the 6 children as it was in the concept that children could start learning at an earlier age. She helped train teachers how to teach children at an earlier age,” says Clark Giles, director of the Emma Eccles Jones Foundation. She pursued her interest with zeal and convinced the Logan public school system to start a kindergarten, one of the first, if not the first, in Utah. It was housed in Whittier elementary school and Emma plowed her director’s salary back into buying supplies for the kids. According to grand nephew, Rick Lawson, Emma believed kids, “must learn social skills as well as develop their minds.” Even in its early form the school had dual purposes: training teachers and teaching children. Apparently she had some of her own family to practice on as well. Rick’s mother, Janet Lawson says, “When my mother couldn’t cope with me she sent me up there.” Rick says, with some mischief in his voice, there was a belief that “Aunt Em could make a decent person out of her.” In 1958, Utah State University opened the Edith Bowen Laboratory School, named after Emma’s good friend and compatriot. Edith had been key in getting the first kindergarten opened. Now there was an elementary school on a college campus that embodied Emma’s belief of beginning kids on the road to learning at age 5 and training teachers to guide them on that journey.