Selection of new dean of the College of Medicine

David Guzick, Senior Vice President for Health Affairs and President of the UF&Shands Health System.

I am pleased to announce that after an exhaustive national search, Dr. Michael L. Good, an anesthesiologist who helped invent sophisticated simulation systems used for medical training around the world, has been named the ninth dean of the University of Florida College of Medicine.

Dr. Good’s appointment as dean begins on Jan. 1, 2010.

As interim dean for 18 months, Dr. Good has proven himself to be an exceptional leader who has gained the confidence of the medical school’s department chairs, faculty and staff, and the enthusiastic support of hospital and university leadership. At this moment when we are building a team to transform UF and Shands – a unique collection of six colleges, five major research institutes and centers, and a major health system comprising seven hospitals – into an academic health center of national distinction, Mike Good is the right medical school dean at the right time for Florida.

He was selected in a process led by search committee chair Dr. Winfred Phillips, UF’s vice president for research. It began with more than 40 highly qualified candidates and progressed to include nine semifinalists who made campus visits and three finalists who underwent more extensive interviews.

Dr. Good was seen by the committee and others who interviewed him as an experienced and highly effective clinician, scholar and academic administrator. He was recognized for working to promote the success of the faculty and institution, for being a superb communicator, and for always conducting himself with utmost integrity and fairness.

As interim dean of the College of Medicine since May 2008, Dr. Good set in motion installation of an electronic medical record system in UF faculty clinics, 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 the UF Shands Cancer Center, and one of the nation’s leading Alzheimer’s disease researchers to lead a new research center in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

In addition, Dr. Good reshaped and enhanced College of Medicine support that enabled the university to receive a $26 million National Institutes of Health’s Clinical and Translational Science Award to transform laboratory discoveries into patient therapies, oversaw the transition of patient care from Shands at AGH and the Shands at UF emergency department 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 development, helping raise more than $60 million in gifts and pledges during the 2008-09 academic year.

After receiving his medical degree at the University of Michigan Medical School in 1984, Good arrived at UF, where he completed a residency in anesthesiology before joining the faculty in 1988.

During this period, Dr. Good teamed with UF colleagues to invent the Human Patient Simulator, a sophisticated computerized teaching tool that is now used in health-care education programs throughout the world.

In 1994, Dr. Good became chief of anesthesiology at the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Gainesville and two years later was named chief of staff and system medical director at the VA. He returned to UF and Shands in 2003 and was appointed senior associate dean for clinical affairs in 2005. In January 2009, he was appointed the Folke H. Peterson Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the College of Medicine.

He and his wife, Danette, have five children – a son who is working in electrical engineering research, two daughters in college, and a son and daughter in high school.

I am greatly appreciative of Dr. Good’s commitment to the success of the College of Medicine. Please join me in congratulating him on this well-deserved appointment.