Dr Daniel Alonso, Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, Qatar speaks about the challenges he faced while working on an exciting project in a completely new country.
YOU could trace a tinge of wistfulness in his voice when the Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, Qatar, (WCMC-Q), Dr Daniel R Alonso, joked, "I am not going anywhere," adding, "I will be here till December, and then continue to serve the Medical College as the Dean Emeritus in an advisory role to help with the transition."But one can empathise with his sentiments, when he eventually leaves the county and the job, after his retirement. Though not new to the kind of job he took up when he came to Qatar eight years ago, he sure was new to the country. And since then, he has borne witness to a lot of change, in the country and the college, some revolutionary, some conventional but none monotonous.Dr Alonso joined the faculty of Cornell University Medical College in New York in 1969, and in 1982, he was appointed Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs and later served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Backed by such strong credentials in administration experience matched with decades of teaching skills, he was chosen to be the Dean of the first American institution to offer its MD degree overseas.
Goals and Expectations
Going down memory lane, Dr Alonso talks about his personal and profes-sional goals, the challenging ones, the effortless ones and some that went much beyond his expectation."When this project appeared in 1999, almost 10 years back, I had been at Cornell University for more than 30 years. So, from the personal perspective, this became almost like the final project, that I would handle, in my career. "Professionally, what attracted me to this assignment was that this was something no university had ever done before, nor has it been replicated and hence a very attractive and challenging assignment to finish off my career. It was an offer that I just couldn't refuse."The easy part was the setting up of the administrative structure and the curriculum, says Dr Alonso. As the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, a newly created position that oversaw all aspects of the medical education mission, his areas of responsibility included the educational programme leading to the MD degree and all related offices of academics, curriculum, admissions and students affairs to name a few. Armed with a vast experience, the structuring of the programme for the students here was the most effort-less of all the other concerns, for Dr Alonso.The challenge, he says, was to recruit faculty."We came just after the 9/11 and just before the Iraq war began, not a good geo-political time to persuade people from North America, from where we recruit our staff, to come here. People in that part of the world, don't understand what happens here because their views are based on what is shown by the media.""But we overcame all that. It was diffcult for a year or so but we still managed to recruit the best."
More to go
A whole cycle is complete, from taking the first students on board to the completion of their six years and reflecting on the period gone by; Dr Alonso says that, he feels proud of what the students and the faculty have achieved."The proof of the work we have done is the test that the students underwent along with the 14,000 doctors from US for their residency. The students did just as well as the others and it is the final recognition of the fact that the standards provided are the same as for the rest of the Cornell students.""It was remarkable but we also have our observations to fill the gaps that we have seen on the way. We have been looking at research and that is being incorporated. "There is so much to be done and we have to do it from scratch. The curriculum wasn't changed much. But the pre-medical course, offered for two years, was altered for the students here.
"The medical course is four years intensive studies after the four year degree programmes at the US. "Here we had to face a different situ-ation because there was no pre-medical programme and we were asked to offer that in addition to the medical programme. We also had to complete the studies in two years, while it actually needed four years. "This made it difficult as the pre-medicals at US not only had science; but humanities and language subjects too. And the advantage of our system was that the students were pretty much used to the intensive study rou-tine that they would have to follow at the medical school. "They were also much older. Keep-ing this in mind, we increased the two-year, pre-med to three-years."A good medical college is a combination of the three most important factors, the education centre, a re-search facility and patient care. "We are incomplete now. So as an answer to this we will now be having Sidra Medical and Research Centre opening in the fall of 2011. That will be very academic and an answer to all the issues we had."
Beyond Comparison
It takes a long time to create a good medical college, re.ects Dr Alonso adding, "The one in New York was founded in 1898. That's more than 110 years ago and we are still in the seventh year. There is a long way to go."Considering the short duration, he feels, the college has indeed made re-markable progress."It is a great partnership for both Weil Cornell and for Qatar. "It wouldn't be fair to compare both these institutions, as the years of practise, service and research makes the main campus one of the best in the world, he says."Let's begin from the size, we have two floors here while in NY, it has multiple buildings and the lowest has eight and it goes to 40 floors. "The number of faculty is important. We have 60 here, specially recruited for the campus and 130 at the Hamad, which is our affiliate hospital, so we could say a total of 200. At the main campus, we have 1, 300 full time faculty and considering the 12 affiliate hospitals, many doctors of the main campus who work there, have a total of 3, 000."We have to understand that we are a branch campus. We rely a lot on the facilities of the mother campus. We have the facility visiting here for lectures and some of them even visit the main campus. There is an enormous amount of technology being used to make the best facilities of the main campus available to them. We also have a strong partnership with Hamad with the students completing most of their third year there. With a combi-nation of all this we have incorporated a course that we are proud of."
© Qatar Today 2008
