Dean's Update
May 16, 2025 - Aron Sousa, MD
Above (l-r): Aron, Haley Divis, MS3, and Chelsea Wentworth, PhD, MPH at the College of Human Medicine Medical Education Showcase
Friends,
This week, I met with a faculty member whose grant was terminated. Losing the grant was painful for her, but she was just as concerned that the government was planning to take down the toxicology database she and other researchers use. The loss of that data would stupefy scientific progress in this area and worsen safety in drug trials and studies of environmental exposure. At that point, the conversation turned to how we might protect the data for future.
Universities and academic institutions, like medical centers, have long been part of the country’s scientific safety net. When our government has not or could not do the science that people need for their safety and health, the scientific safety net has been there to protect the people.
Our prime example of the scientific safety net in action is the Flint Water Crisis. When the state did not do the scientific work, and the EPA under Obama did not do the work, the faculty of Hurley Medical Center, the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and Virginia Tech supported the citizen scientists of Flint with scientific expertise that demonstrated the toxicity in the water, the increases in lead in the children of Flint, and the direct relationship between the lead in the water and the lead in the kids.
The Flint Water Crisis is an example of the scientific safety net catching us when the government was not doing its job. The government was similarly ineffective during the Volkswagen diesel scandal, which was caught by engineers from West Virginia University.
As for all backup systems, the scientific safety net is most obvious and useful in a crisis, and our governments were simply overwhelmed by COVID. We can talk all day about how the federal government had diminished its capacity over the previous years, but in the end the pandemic was too big for government. Universities and hospitals created new tests and testing protocols (recall Spartan Spit), while our medical students gave shots and made educational videos.
These are unprecedented times, but the value and importance of our university and maintaining America’s position as the best university system in the world remain unchanged. As a part of the scientific safety net, academics across the country are working to safeguard data that could be lost. The challenges may mount; nevertheless, we persist.
We do great work around the state and much of it contributes to the scientific safety net. Our academic medicine public intellectual work in rural communities of the UP and Lower Peninsula and similarly underserved urban communities is a great example of how the university delivers on the land grant mission across the full diversity of 10 million Michiganders we serve. You can learn more about how the university’s research delivers that impact through the Research for You website. At that site you can learn about the college’s cancer researchers, including Chaz Hong, MD, PhD, the Klomps, who work on pancreatic cancer, and a range of public health programs. But wait, there is more. You can find out how to support that work through the Spartan Advocate program.
This week, the dean’s office has been focused on how to implement the university’s 9% general fund cut over two years. We also must prepare for the partial or total loss of Medicaid funding, which is about 13% of the college’s operating budget. Let me provide some reassurance this will not require us to cut to the sum of those amounts, but this is going to be difficult. We are not going to do across-the-board cuts. For example, we have some departments that are already on reduced funding (56% of salaries) and cannot take a full cut. We have already stopped two clinical service lines that required significant financial subsidy, and we will stop clinical subsidies outside of the primary care. Not all that funding accrues to cuts in general funds, so we will ask departments and dean’s office units to provide a plan for 6% and 9% cuts in FY26. We will work on how to implement the cuts we need to meet the university’s requirement and Medicaid funding reductions without a midyear cut if Medicaid funding stops.
As we go through these struggles, I feel better when I get to enjoy being with our faculty and students. Thursday evening, I had the chance to drop in on the College of Human Medicine Education Scholarship Showcase, which includes the Maatsch Lecture and a poster session. It was delightful to see the great work of our people, and the speaker, Lara Varpio, PhD, gave a thought provoking and enjoyable talk, “Professional Identity Formation as Immigration.” Jack L. Maatsch, himself, focused on instructional theory and technology, and he was a professor and then director in the Office for Medical Education Research and Development (OMERAD) over his college career from 1971 to 1990. OMERAD was the first unit in the college, and it continues our tradition of innovation through work on curriculum, assessment, and artificial intelligence in medical education. It was good to be with our educational team last night.
Serving the people with you,
Aron
Aron Sousa, MD, FACP
Dean, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine