In his 2002 inaugural address, Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger made it clear that the Universitys medical center would be among his core leadership priorities. The discoveries in the combined areas of medicine and health care, biology, engineering, chemistry, physics, computers, and technologyknown today as the life sciencesare revolutionary in scale, he said. No great university can minimize the potential here for transforming our understanding of life and our capacity to preserve health. And a great university will figure out how to deal with one of the most important questions of higher education, namely how to bridge the intellectual strengths of the health sciences and professions and the fundamental science disciplines in Arts and Sciencesrepresented physically for us by the two campuses of Washington Heights and Morningside Heights.

In his first full year at Columbia, Bollinger took major steps to realize those goals, strengthening the medical centers leadership both within the institution and around the world. He worked with Mailman School Professor Wafaa El-Sadr and then-Dean Allan Rosenfeld on the establishment of ICAP, which went on to become one of the pioneering AIDS/HIV prevention, care, and research initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa. He also created auniversity-wide executive vice president for research, naming David Hirsh, the College of Physicians and Surgeons chair of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, to build an office designed to elevate faculty research though a more systemic, unified, and professionalized system for grant applications, compliance, and administration.While the office supports the academic and clinical research mission across every campus, its work has been especially important at the medical center, which typically generates at least two-thirds of Columbia's total research funding.

While Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) had long been among the nations leading academic medical centers, it was essential for the University to address the growing financial and organizational challenges of managing the institutions resources and relationship with its clinical partner, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. In the spring of 2006, Bollinger named Lee Goldman of the University of California San Francisco as the executive vice president for health and biomedical sciences and dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine. Over the years that followed, the two went on to appoint transformational deans at every CUIMC school: Linda Fried at the Mailman School, Christian Stohler at the College of Dental Medicine, and Bobbie Berkowitz and later Lorraine Frazier at the School of Nursing. Fried, for example, a distinguished geriatrician at Johns Hopkins, expanded Mailmans local and global leadership in establishing auniversity-wide, interdisciplinary aging center to explore and better understand the aging process and its societal implications. After Goldmans retirement in 2020, Bollinger asked Anil Rustgi, professor of medicine, director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, and associate dean of oncology at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, to serve as interim executive vice president and dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine during what turned out to be a period of profound challenge and success in CUIMCs response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, Bollinger appointedHarvard Medical School Professor Katrina Armstrong, chair of the Department of Medicine and physician in chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, to write the next chapter of CUIMC history as its chief executive and dean of the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Individually and collectively, these leaders have revitalized the medical center over the last two decades, expanding research, teaching, and clinical care; hiring a diverse range of accomplished faculty members; and deepeningpartnerships with and services for Upper Manhattan communities. They also helped transform the CUIMC campus through a massive investment in acclaimed new buildings for medical education at VP&S and the Nursing School, as well as capital renovations that enhanced some 1.8 million square feet of space for students, clinicians, researchers, and staff. Goldman oversaw the introduction of a modernized Faculty Practice Organization, the opening of a center for outpatient clinical care in Midtown Manhattan, a major expansion of ColumbiaDoctors into New Yorks Westchester County, as well as other locations across the city and region.

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Lee C. Bollinger and the Revitalization of Columbia's Medical Center - Columbia University