Dear Colleagues:

As you know, last month we embarked on our ambitious Catalyst campaign, a multiyear fundraising effort that will secure vital resources for student scholarships, faculty endowments, and interdisciplinary projects and facilities. The campaign is essential to advancing UMB’s prominence among universities nationwide and ensuring that our important work has the impact it deserves. 

A successful fundraising effort requires me to spend more time out of the office, attracting donors to the University and influencing the decision makers who can help us achieve our ambitions. And so it’s more critical than ever that I take maximum advantage of the outstanding leadership team that I’ve been fortunate enough to assemble around me over my seven-plus years at UMB.

Accordingly, Bruce Jarrell, MD, FACS, will be named executive vice president and provost. The inclusion of “provost” in Dr. Jarrell’s title is long overdue and is reflective of his role as this University’s academic and research leader, his role within the University System of Maryland, and his role in guiding our Strategic Partnership with the University of Maryland, College Park.

I have long believed that UMB is uniquely suited and uniquely qualified to serve as a convener of Maryland’s higher education institutions, institutions both inside and outside the University System. As we take on this mantle of leadership through interinstitutional collaboration, our responsibilities within the state’s wider academic community will only grow, and I will depend on Dr. Jarrell to attend to them. There will be little change to Dr. Jarrell’s responsibilities internally at UMB, and the deans will continue to report to me.

Meanwhile, E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, will be named executive vice president of medical affairs. This, too, is a change whose time has come. The title reflects Dean Reece’s primacy in leading our sizable medical faculty, his principal role in stewarding and strengthening UMB’s critical partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System, and his oversight of the University’s Faculty Physicians, Inc.

Dean Reece’s current responsibilities in leading the School of Medicine are already enormous, and he will continue to serve the school as its dean. But I will increasingly depend on Dean Reece to work closely with me and with UMB’s entire leadership team on broad University priorities.

Dr. Jarrell and Dean Reece will assume these executive vice president roles tomorrow, Dec. 1, and I thank them for their invaluable guidance as we work to strengthen UMB’s academic leadership here in Maryland and well beyond. 

Sincerely,

Jay A. Perman, MD
President