On the Same Page

Meet the new deans

Dec. 24, 2009

Have you seen the white smoke emanating from the HSC lately?

In the past two months, deans were appointed to two HSC colleges: On Nov. 4, Michael
Perri, Ph.D., was appointed dean of the College of Public Health and Health
Professions, and on Dec. 21, Michael Good, M.D., was appointed dean of the College
of Medicine. The press releases for Dr. Perri and Dr. Good provide information on their
professional biographies, the search process, and some broader context. But who are
these new deans as people? What are their stories? This issue of On the Same Page
will try to answer these questions.

Meet the new deans:

Michael Perri, Ph.D.
Dean, College of Public Health and Health Professions

A native of New York City, Mike Perri was born and raised in the Bronx, the eldest of
five siblings and the only boy in the mix. Mike's grandparents were immigrants from Italy
who arrived in the U.S. via Ellis Island just prior to World War I. Mike's dad worked as a
machinist for the Bendix Company, where he crafted parts for the Apollo moon vehicles,
while Mike's mother was a "work-at-home" mom who many years later attended
community college and became a dental hygienist.

Mike's career interests were shaped during his teen years when he read Sigmund
Freud's "Introduction to Psychoanalysis" and became intrigued with psychotherapy.
Mike earned a New York State Regents Scholarship and was the "first generation" of his
family to attend college. He studied psychology at Fordham University and
simultaneously ran his own small business a hot dog stand that catered to visitors of
the Bronx Zoo. While at Fordham, Mike met and dated Kathy Doyle, a student at Hunter
College-Belleview School of Nursing.

After completing his bachelor's degree, Mike was offered an NIH pre-doctoral fellowship
to study clinical psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Mike accepted the
fellowship with the intention of eventually returning to NYC to practice
psychotherapy. After a two-year long-distance relationship, Kathy and Mike were
married, and Kathy joined Mike in Missouri, where she pursued her master's degree in
nursing. Graduate school cultivated in Mike an interest in clinical research, particularly
the use of behavioral methods for disease prevention.
Mike began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of
Rochester, where, against the advice of senior faculty (who argued that clinical trials

were a "risky business"), he initiated a series of studies on behavioral methods to
improve the long-term management of obesity. Mike continued this line of research at
the Indiana University School of Medicine and later at Fairleigh Dickinson University
before joining the faculty of the University of Florida in 1990 as a professor in the
Department of Clinical and Health Psychology.

Mike has contributed to more than 120 scientific publications and has served as
principal investigator or co-investigator for more than $30 million in research grants and
contracts from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs and
private industry. In 2008 he received the American Psychological Association Samuel
M. Turner Award for Distinguished Contributions to Applied Research in Clinical
Psychology.

Mike has taught in the classroom and/or in the clinic in every year of his tenure at UF,
has chaired more than 30 doctoral dissertation committees, and has held a variety of
administrative positions, including head of the Health Psychology Division, director of
the Psychology Internship Program and PHHP's associate dean for research. As interim
dean, Mike faced a major shortfall in the college's operating budget and growing
skepticism among the PHHP faculty regarding the appropriateness of seeking
accreditation during a time of scarce resources. These circumstances presented a
pivotal point in the history of the college that forced Mike to confront a series of difficult
decisions. Pursuit of accreditation required the investment of additional resources, while
dealing with the budget crisis necessitated the closure of two programs and the layoff of
several employees. The cumulative effects of these difficult decisions led to stabilization
of the PHHP's shaky financial foundation and the college's achievement of full
accreditation as a school of public health.

As interim dean, Mike strengthened interdisciplinary collaborations both within the
college and across the campus. He initiated a program to fund multidisciplinary pilot
projects, and he established the Florida Trauma Rehabilitation Center for Returning
Military Personnel, a collaborative research endeavor of all departments in PHHP. Other
accomplishments under Mike's leadership included the approval of two new Ph.D.
programs (Epidemiology and Biostatistics), the establishment of the new Department of
Environmental and Global Health, the merger of the Departments of Communication
Sciences and Disorders (from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and
Communicative Disorders (in PHHP), and creation of an online Masters program in
Public Health.

Mike and Kathy Perri are a true "UF&Shands" couple. While Mike has served on the UF
faculty since 1990, Kathy has worked as an ICU nurse at Shands for almost 19
years. Mike and Kathy have two children, Katie, 24, and Matthew, 16. Katie graduated
last year from the University of Southern California and currently works as a financial
analyst for an international business consulting firm. Matthew is currently a student at
Eastside High School. Loyal to their Bronx heritage, the Perris are all die-hard Yankee
fans.

Michael L. Good, M.D.
Dean, College of Medicine

Michael Good was the oldest of five children and raised in Waterford, Michigan, a
northern suburb of Detroit. He graduated valedictorian of his high school class in
1977. His father was a pharmacist by professional training, but spent most of his career
running pharmacy businesses, which were among the first in the 1970s to utilize the
then newly emerging fax technology to speed prescription processing and the delivery
of medications to nursing homes and foster care facilities. Mike's grandparents and later
his father brought the family into the roller skating rink business, an important life event,
as it was at the skating rink that Mike met Danette Sullivan, a four-time national
champion roller skater. After a four-year courtship, Mike and Danette married in 1984.

Mike tells me that for as long as he can remember, he knew he wanted to be a
physician. While attending the University of Michigan, however, for his undergraduate
education he also sought an "employable" major, "in case I did not get into medical
school." He decided on a bachelor's degree in computer and communication science,
which was awarded with distinction in 1980. He matriculated into the University of
Michigan Medical School that same year. Although he would eventually make a career
choice in anesthesiology, Mike now enjoys recounting the first day of his third year of
medical school, when he passed out cold and "hit the floor" after confronting an open
surgical field for the first time (on the ob-gyn service). "Sleep, breakfast and hydration
are important," he now tells our medical students. "And you can do very well in medical
school and a career in anesthesiology despite a very tough first day in the OR!"

After visiting top anesthesiology residencies throughout the nation and being heavily
recruited to UF by Jerry Modell and Joachim ("Nik") Gravenstein, Mike sought and
successfully matched into the anesthesiology training program in the UF College of
Medicine. Soon after arriving at UF, Good realized that the apprenticeship form of
resident education was not optimal learning, noting that beginning residents need more
than two or three cases a day to acquire basic skills while senior residents had no
reliable way to experience rare complications. Working with a team of physician and
engineering collaborators spanning two continents, Good helped to invent the Human
Patient Simulator, a lifelike human representation with sophisticated clinical signs and
physiologic and pharmacologic responsiveness. After several prototypes, the inventing
team successfully transferred the patented technology to industry, where it is now
manufactured by Medical Education Technologies Inc. (METI) in Sarasota, Florida. The
UF Human Patient Simulator is a transformational educational technology that now
permeates the learning environments of all health-care professionals and is used at
institutions throughout the world.

In 1994, Mike accepted an appointment as the division chief of anesthesiology at the
Gainesville VA Medical Center. Two years later, VA Director Malcom Randall, for whom
the medical center was later named, drew Mike into hospital administration, appointing
him as chief of staff. Mike recalls this tremendous learning opportunity: Mr. Randall, who

at the time was the most senior VA director in the entire nation, personally mentored
Mike's leadership development, including issues at the local, regional and national
levels. With ever-growing duties and responsibilities, by the time Mike left the VA in
2003 he was serving as system medical director for the North Florida South Georgia
Veteran Health System, with clinical oversight responsibility for two hospitals, three
large multispecialty clinics, five primary care clinics and the health of tens of thousands
of veterans living in 53 counties. The VA and federal government have strong
leadership development programs, and Mike was able to take advantage of three
different programs over a span of seven years. Mike is quick to point out that
"leadership is a learned skill, but it is important to attend class, study and practice
known and innovative leadership approaches to optimizing organizational performance."

Chair of anesthesiology Nicholas ("Nik") Gravenstein recruited Mike back to UF in 2003
over a hamburger lunch at Louie's. At $6.53 for both, this has to be the all-time record
for cheap recruiting meals in the history of UF! By 2004, Dean Craig Tisher had brought
Mike into the dean's office on a part-time basis to help with VA affairs, and then in 2005,
after an internal search, Dean Tisher appointed him full-time as senior associate dean
for clinical affairs. Soon after his appointment, Mike encountered a difficult clinical
problem of surgical patients remaining in the OR after completion of surgery, often for
many hours, because their postoperative beds were not available. This prevented the
next patient from entering the OR, and severely hampered OR patient flow. Working
collaboratively with a leadership and management engineering team, mathematical
models were used to identify the underlying causes. Based on the results, a new
scheduling system was implemented, and within a few months, over 10 percent
additional ICU surgical cases were being completed each week without OR holds, just
as the models had predicted. This systems-based approach to achieving goals is
perhaps Mike's greatest leadership skill, one that has also been used for measuring OR
utilization and adjusting block time assignments, which helped contribute to the highest
number of surgeries ever being completed by UF surgeons last fiscal year.

Mike was appointed interim dean in May of 2008 after a series of highly publicized
problems in the medical school. The day after his appointment, surgery resident Hugh
Walters was killed in an automobile accident, and one of Mike's first duties as interim
dean was to meet with Hugh's grieving parents, fellow residents and faculty
colleagues. "Hugh's death was tragic," said Mike, "and served to remind all of us how
precious, and fragile, life can be." As interim dean, Mike set in motion installation of an
ambulatory electronic medical record system in UF faculty clinics, worked with UF
administration to obtain additional state funding for the medical school, appointed a
senior associate dean for research affairs, and filled open chair positions in neurology,
surgery, neuroscience, obstetrics and gynecology, and molecular genetics and
microbiology. In a challenging fiscal environment, he fostered faculty development,
including the recruitment of a nationally recognized radiation oncologist and researcher
to direct our Cancer Center, and one of the leading Alzheimer's disease researchers to
lead a new research center in Alzheimer's and other degenerative diseases. In addition,
Mike provided substantial College of Medicine support to the successful Clinical and
Translational Science Institute, contributing to its CTSA funding by the NIH. He oversaw

the transition of patient care from Shands at AGH and the Shands at UF emergency
departments to the Shands Cancer Hospital at UF, and worked to elevate the College of
Medicine's physician assistant program to "school" status. He was also instrumental in
raising over $60 million in gifts and pledges during the 2008-09 academic year.

Now, as Mike transitions from interim to permanent dean, he begins to shift his efforts
from college operations to strategic planning and program development. He states: "I
look to a COM future in which every patient has an optimal highest quality and reliably
safe care experience, every patient has the opportunity to benefit from clinical research,
and UF becomes a medical school that differentiates its graduates with dual degrees
and published papers. As dean, the success of our faculty will be the focus on my
work. Patients seek care at UF&Shands because of the unique expertise provided by
our clinical faculty. The state of Florida and indeed the world looks to our research
faculty for discoveries that cure disease and optimize health. And the best and brightest
students come to UF for professional education because of an exceptionally talented
and dedicated education faculty." I have no doubt that Mike will achieve this vision, and
in the process, the UF COM will advance from being a very good medical school one
of the best in the Southeast to becoming one of the premier medical schools in the
United States.

During this first holiday season in Gainesville, my family and I want to express our
heartfelt appreciation to the readers of this page for being so warmly welcomed into the
UF&Shands family, and into the larger community. As I approach my first six months on
the job, having been given the honor and privilege of leading this very special academic
health center, I find that the best way to describe my feelings is to say that I have been
inspired. I have been inspired by your aspirations and your talent. And by your
commitment to do the right thing. We will.

For many, the holiday season itself adds its own special stress. My suggestion is this:
Give yourself the gift of reflection. Embrace this time as a gift. Reflect on the meaning of
the season in the broader context of your personal and professional life. As we look
forward to the New Year, join me in coming back inspired.

Sincerely,

David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D.
Senior Vice President, Health Affairs
President, UF&Shands Health System