Passing the Torch

By Rich Polikoff

As the new president of the University of Utah School of Medicine Alumni Association, J. Eric Vanderhooft, MD ’88 hopes to build on the advances that were made under his predecessor, Teresa Ota, MD ’88.

During Ota’s two years of leadership, the alumni board has worked hard to strengthen the connections between alumni and current medical students, raised support for scholarships and School of Medicine initiatives, and overseen the transformation its flagship publication Illuminations into UtahMed.

Vanderhooft and Ota have known each other for more than a quarter-century. What follows is a lightly edited interview with them.

WHAT DO YOU VIEW AS A HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR TIME AS PRESIDENT?

Ota: I’ve tried to get more participation from the alumni board and I think we’ve been successful in that. The student body is more diverse and I think that’s reflected in the makeup of the board. I’m also really excited that we have increased the number of activities where we interact with students and opportunities to work one-on-one with alumni.

Vanderhooft: Teresa has been very inclusive. By involving our PhDs and our PAs, we include the whole spectrum of alumni who represent the School of Medicine.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE ACTIVITIES THAT YOU THINK ARE HELPING GET MORE PEOPLE ENGAGED?

Ota: Winter bowling. We’ve drawn in younger alumni who haven’t served on the board. I think that’s been really beneficial for the students to be able to talk to people from different practices, different specialties, and different degrees of experience.

Vanderhooft: The Mentor Mixer engages local community physicians and university faculty and the student body. I hope that’s going to reap big rewards and lead people to want to stay engaged with us.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE GOING FORWARD?

Ota: I’d like to see more participation from alumni and from the board, as well as more diverse mentors.

Vanderhooft: That’s an important point. I think we’re getting the representation, but I’d like to see more active interaction with the alumni in those colleges. I also want to get the engagement of the other disciplines such as PAs and PhDs.

Ota: Alumni can benefit from being more engaged. Many of the same physicians return to our events because they enjoy and seek that interaction with students. It’s really rewarding for everyone.

Vanderhooft: Motivating people to be further engaged would help the alumni association with the goals that we’re attempting to do, and also enhance our reputation—where people are proud to say this is their medical school and they’d love to talk to you about it.

IS THERE A SPECIFIC THING YOU’D LIKE TO FOCUS ON AS PRESIDENT?

Vanderhooft: Teresa’s husband and I were partners in practice, and one thing that shocked both of us was how expensive it was to send our children to college. Now Teresa has a daughter who will be going to medical school and it’s more than 10 times the expense of when we went there! One of my colleagues pushed her children not to become doctors, and when I see the expense, I can certainly understand that. I’d like to help more people afford to be doctors because I fear the cost is getting to be too prohibitive.

So beyond supporting the med school, one of the things that I’d like to build on are the scholarships that [Executive Director] Kristin Anderson and [Dean of Education] Wayne Samuelson have done so much work on. I’d like this still to be a noble profession, and I want to make it possible that talented people want to keep pursuing this as a career.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT HANDING OFF THE BATON?

Ota: I’ve known Eric for a long time, 26 years, and I think he’ll do a fantastic job.

WHAT CHALLENGES EXIST FOR THE ALUMNI BOARD?

Vanderhooft: The sort of things that I see as chal- lenges...I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know about this board; I was asked by a friend to be on it. It took me a number of years to understand what we were really all about.

WITH AN ALUMNI POPULATION THAT IS CONTINUING TO EVOLVE MORE NATIONALLY, HOW DOES THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ADAPT TO SERVE THEM?

Ota: In our communication, we are trying to broaden it so that we have things that are of interest to anybody, not necessarily Salt Lake City. UtahMed has things that are of interest to anybody and any alumni. As we go forward with the way we are changing our communications, we’ll be more aware of that.

Vanderhooft: I’d like our alumni, especially as they go out nationally, to be proud of our school. I want them to view it as a place where they were well-educated and they want to support it, and they want the next gen- eration of students to come through and for it to be top-notch.

WHAT SHOULD PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION?

Ota: I had been gone for 20-something years before I joined the SOM alumni association. It’s a place where I spent a lot of time, it meant a lot to me, and I wanted to give something back. Until I was involved, I had no idea what the association did, and I think that getting