Charles R. Hatcher Jr., vice president for health affairs and director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center, has asked President Bill Chace to begin the process of finding his successor, so that Hatcher may retire from his administrative positions whenever appropriate during the year following his 65th birthday on June 28.
At the regularly scheduled meeting of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center Board on Wed., March 8, Chace told board members he was honoring Hatcher's request and had named a search committee headed by Provost Billy Frye. The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees was presented with the names of the search committee on March 9. The committee includes Thomas M. Aaberg, chair of ophthamology; Dyanne D. Affonso, dean of nursing; Charles B. Ginden, executive vice president, Trust Company Bank; John D. Henry, chief operating officer, Emory System of Health Care; Thomas R. Insel, director, Yerkes Primate Research Center; Wilton D. Looney, honorary chair of the board, Genuine Parts Co.; J. David Lambeth, chair of biochemistry; Reynaldo Martorell, Woodruff Professor of International Nutritition in Public Health; Douglas C. Morris, director of Emory Heart Center; Rein Saral, director of The Emory Clinic; and June R. Scott, Candler Professor of microbiology and immunology, medical school.
Chace told the board, "Dr. Hatcher's long and distinguished service to the University represents an era of great growth and rising prominence for Emory as a research facility, a provider of patient care and an educator of tomorrow's best physicians. His service has been exemplary in its intelligence and in its perceptiveness about the momentous changes, year to year, in medical care."
Hatcher will continue in his present positions until the new vice president and health sciences center director is on board, said Chace. Hatcher also will continue as chief executive officer of the Emory University System of Health Care (EUSHC), which is held by whoever is director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center by EUSHC bylaws.
Hatcher has held the vice president and health sciences center director positions since 1983, although he was acting director the previous year during the illness and medical leave of the late Garland Herndon, who served as vice president for health affairs and director of the center from 1973-83. Hatcher has been on the Emory faculty for 33 years.
The director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center is responsible for the schools of medicine, nursing, and public health, as well as Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, Emory Hospital and Crawford Long Hospital. This represents 1,367 faculty, plus 1,970 volunteer faculty and collaborative scientists, and more than 10,000 staff.
In addition to serving as chief executive officer of the EUHSC, the director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center also oversees Emory's hospital affiliation relationships with Egleston Children's Hospital, Wesley Woods Geriatric Hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Through the EUHSC and these affiliations, Emory provides the major part of all patient care in Atlanta, with responsibility for 2,928 hospital beds and 1.5 million patient visits annually.
-- Sylvia Wrobel