Managed-care health systems and hospital mergers are common in Massachusetts, and Harvard's affiliated teaching hospitals reflect those trends. Brigham and Women's Hospital merged with Mass. General in 1993 to form Partners Heath Care, and Mount Auburn and Deaconess hospitals recently merged as well.

Martin's experience on both coasts may have helped to prepare him for the conditions of health care in Massachusetts.

During his time at Harvard, where he chaired HMS's neurology department and served as acting head of Mass. General, he gained familiarity with the school's administrative structure.

After leaving Boston, Martin served as dean of the UCSF school of Medicine from 1989 to 1993. While there, he helped run UCSF's first capital campaign, which concluded in July of 1996. The campaign pulled in more than $550 million for the university.

He also gained experience with managed care, currently prevalent in California.

Administrative Changes

As a member of the increasingly centralized administration, Martin will also have to acclimate to a bureaucratic structure different from the one he left.

In his five years at Harvard, Rudenstine has attempted to rally the deans of the different schools around interfaculty initiatives and other collaborative processes. HMS has been a key player in many of those programs.

Martin will be expected to step in and continue those collaborations without detracting from the HMS's own programs. This could put further pressures on the new dean to find extra resources despite a shrinking supply of research funding.

However, the provost stresses the benefits of cooperation among different sections of the University.

"Martin is one of the first "to recognize that addressing the challenges facing health care requires collaborations among people," Carnesale says.

The Student Perspective

HMS students, who will be among the first to feel the impact of Martin's leadership, laud his reputation. He is known at medical schools across the country as one of the authors of a major medical textbook, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine.

But some students wonder what sort of dean Martin will be, and particularly whether he will maintain HMS's revolutionary approach to medical instruction.

In 1985, Tosteson and other HMS faculty members pioneered a medical education program called the New Pathway which steered students away from rote memorization. Instead, medical students now spend more time discussing cases in small groups with faculty members.