Notable astronomer,
doctor wooed by UHCancer center to fill key post
By Helen Altonn
Star-BulletinUniversity of Hawaii officials hope they will reach an agreement this week with a Cambridge University astronomer to lead the UH's renowned Institute for Astronomy.
"It will be a real coup if we get him," said UH Senior Vice President Dean Smith, who declined to name the candidate.
"He is quite well known internationally," and is being wooed by others, said Karen Rehbock, assistant to the institute director.
The Cambridge Institute for Astronomy scientist has done a lot of research in Hawaii, she said. He has been here several times from England for discussions about the institute position and will bring his wife this week, she said.
Robert McLaren, who oversees the Mauna Kea observatory complex, has been interim institute director since July 1997. He replaced Don Hall.
The UH also has been courting Dr. Larry Shapiro, chief of pediatrics at the University of California at San Francisco medical school, to head the John A. Burns School of Medicine.
Sherrel Hammar has been interim dean of the medical school since December 1996, when Christian Gulbrandsen retired.
Shapiro's wife is from Hawaii and he's "an impressive guy," Smith said.
But uncertainty about the school's future has caused a setback in negotiations, he said.
Two faculty committees in proposed university reorganization plans recommended closing the school. However, Gov. Ben Cayetano and UH administrators have said they intend to keep it and make it research-intensive.
UH administrators have explored the possibility of merging the medical school with two thriving UH scientific facilities -- the Cancer Research Center and Pacific Biomedical Research Center.
The university is asking the Legislature for $3 million a year for the next five years to support the medical school. Cayetano says it must be maintained and strengthened to achieve the state's goal to become a Pacific health and wellness center.
He has talked to UH President Kenneth Mortimer about possibly turning the school over to a large mainland medical institution for private operation.
Smith said he looked into privatizing the medical school and found that no university school has been fully privatized.
The University of Oregon medical school was converted to a quasi-private corporation -- the Oregon Sciences University, he said. The school owned a hospital and was having financial problems so it became semi-private, he said.
He noted several other cases where universities privatized their hospitals, but the UH medical school has no hospital.
"The notion of just privatizing a (medical) school without a hospital component hasn't been done," he said. "It doesn't mean we couldn't do it, but we would be breaking ground."
German may get
By Helen Altonn
key UH post
Star-BulletinBrian Issell's 2-1/2-year wait to be replaced as director of the University of Hawaii Cancer Research Center may soon be over.
The UH Board of Regents will be asked at its meeting Friday to approve the appointment of Carl-Wilhelm Vogel, 48, to succeed Issell, who wants to devote himself to full-time research. The board's personnel committee is recommending the appointment.
Vogel is chairman of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Hamburg in Germany.His salary at the cancer center will be about $200,000 a year, which is competitive with similar positions across the country, said UH Senior Vice President Dean Smith. Issell receives $190,000, Smith said.
"It is good for me and good for the center to have someone come in with a fresh approach," said Issell, who has directed the center for more than a decade.
Vogel, a German married to an American, earned medical and doctor of philosophy degrees at the University of Hamburg and did postgraduate work there.
He was a research fellow at the Scripps Medical Clinic in La Jolla, Calif., and for 12 years was at the Georgetown University Cancer Center in Washington for a medical residency and laboratory work.
He returned to Germany after Georgetown. But first, he obtained licenses to practice medicine in states he thought he might eventually like to live in, including Hawaii, Issell said.
