A beachfront home with an empty dock off Florida?s Manatee River awaits University of Maryland School of Medicine Dean Donald E. Wilson when he officially retires at the end of August.
“I?m going to be relaxing on the water,” Wilson, 69, said of his first major vacation in a long time, three weeks beginning Aug. 31.
“It?s nice to not be answering the telephone or getting a message on your BlackBerry all the time.”
His dock can accommodate a 300-foot craft, but Wilson has no plans to buy a boat.
“I plan to cultivate friends who have boats, have them come visit and go out on their boats,” he said. “When they leave, the [boat maintenance] problem leaves with them.”
But the 15-year dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs for the University of Maryland is not going out to pasture.
He is scheduled to return and work with the new dean into the next year, but he wants to cut back from the intense work he put into the institution during his time at the helm.
“You can?t look for diamonds and do anything with them unless you?re willing to put in 70 to 80 hours. I?m not able to do that any more,” Wilson said. “Dean Wilson is among the most talented physicians serving in academic medicine today,” university President David Ramsay said.
“In our time together at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, I have found him to be an outstanding colleague and have relied on his wisdom and expertise. The progress our medical school made during his tenure as dean has been truly remarkable.”
Aside from taking up the piano after 50 years? estrangement, Wilson hopes to work part-time advocating sound medicine and policy. He does not, however, want lobbying or advocacy to turn into a full-time career either.
“It?s good to be able to do something when you want to,” he said.
Named the 29th dean of the School of Medicine and its first black dean in 1991, Johnson nearly doubled the size of the school, increased revenues and grants, and expanded the number of specialized departments, organized research centers and ongoing programs.
Resistance to some of those changes lingers today, he said, as the school prepares to appoint its second black dean, E. Albert Reece.
“There were a lot of people who didn?t like the idea of a black man being dean of a major medical institution,” Wilson said.
That attitude can be found “even in 2006.”
Reece said Wilson?s opinions were widely sought by his colleagues in the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges, where he served as chairman.
“Dean Wilson is one of the longest-tenured deans in America, often regarded as the ?Dean of Deans,?” he said. “People would want to hear Don?s comments or his perspective.”
Reece acknowledged Wilson?s work turning the University of Maryland School of Medicine into a world-class institution.
“That?s what drew me here. He?s done a lot for the institution. It?s come a long way,” he said.
