Dean's Update
October 25, 2024 - Aron Sousa, MD
(Above) Aron stops in front of our GRR billboard of Kathy Steece-Collier, PhD, and her team on his way to visit with some alumni in New York this week.
Friends,
In Michigan you can register to vote all the way up to election day, so it is not too late to make sure you and yours are registered. I’ve already voted, and if you have not asked for an absentee ballot, you can pick one up from your county clerk’s office up until the day before election day. In Michigan, anyone can vote absentee; you do not need a reason or an excuse. Michigan election law also now allows for early voting beginning this Saturday, October 26. The state has an easy to use website with all this information. Oh, and remind your friends to vote – it matters.
As we approach the election, I want to remind people that we are a school, a workplace, and a clinical organization. We exist as an institution for patients, students, and colleagues, which means we are here for others and not ourselves. The election appears to be close and will be consequential. Everyone should be able to get care, do their work, and learn in our classrooms, clinics, offices, and laboratories without being confronted by the choice of candidate of the person next to them. Be thoughtful, patient, forgiving, and good to each other.
This week, the college hosted the president’s inaugural Spartan Bus Tour during one of their stops in Grand Rapids. Three days into the bus tour and the people on the bus still seemed to be doing well together after stops at vineyards, agricultural stations, and small towns around northwest Michigan. They stopped in Traverse City and learned about our researchers there, and we took the opportunity in Grand Rapids to talk about our community engagement across the state, how our programs economically support communities, and a bit about how discoveries and innovations move from our faculty to policy or the marketplace.
We presented a few remarkable stories including the work of the all-women team of Kathy Steece-Collier, PhD, who has created a company to move a new medication for Parkinson’s disease toward the market. Our panel also included Andre Bachmann, PhD, who had the chance to talk about Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome as well as moving DFMO through the FDA for use in neuroblastoma. My thanks to them, our emcee Jack Lipton, PhD, and Dave Washburn, Chief Executive Officer of the MSU Foundation, for their contributions to the tightly scheduled lunch hour.
Last week, we hosted over 175 alumni, family, and friends for our annual alumni weekend in Grand Rapids, kicking off on Friday evening with a town hall featuring an alumni panel discussion and reception, and continuing Saturday with a homecoming tailgate and football game. You can catch up with our 60th Anniversary alumni panel from Friday’s Town Hall. Our alumni do remarkable work serving communities across the country and around the world.
Catching up with alumni is a perk of the deanship. I squeezed a trip to New York into the week, and met Patrick Hennessey, MD (’75), who has been a dermatologist focused on cancer in NYC and at NYU for nearly 50 years. His career has stretched from seeing some of the first Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) cases in young men in New York, even before they knew KS was related to HIV, through the COVID pandemic. And Patrick is still going! It was fun and inspiring to meet with him and see New York through his eyes.
We continue the 60th Anniversary Town Halls in the UP when we visit Marquette on November 1, Flint on November 15, and then when Midland brings it all home on December 10. Don’t miss them if you can.
Serving the people with you,
Aron
Aron Sousa, MD, FACP
Dean, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine