SUBJECT:

Appointment of Robert T. “Chip” Schooley as Senior Director, International Initiatives

I’m delighted to announce the appointment of Robert T. “Chip” Schooley, as Senior Director, International Initiatives effective May 1, 2017. He will succeed Alan Houston, who was recently appointed as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at Durham University, UK.

A member of the UC San Diego faculty since 2005, Dr. Schooley currently serves as Academic Vice Chair in the Department of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Disease. He received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and held fellowships in infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Before joining UC San Diego, Dr. Schooley held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, where he served as Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases. In this role, he was elected to serve as Chair of the NIAIDS’s AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) which included research sites in Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia and Africa. His current research interests include HIV and HCV pathogenesis and therapy and infections that cause morbidity and mortality in resource limited settings. He provides collaborative leadership to the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) School of Medicine in Mozambique - UC San Diego Medical Education Partnership Initiative, an extensive collaboration between UC San Diego and Mozambique’s major universities in support of education and research in multiple medical specialties, bioinformatics and engineering.

As Senior Director, International Initiatives, Dr. Schooley will provide strategic oversight for UC San Diego’s collaborative efforts in international engagement, including oversight for the Office of International Affairs. In order to fulfill our institution’s global potential, campus efforts must be better coordinated, communicated and championed.

To this end, he will engage campus partners in exploring new forms of educational cooperation with foreign universities, and in developing strategies for diversifying the international growth of UC San Diego’s students. He will be responsible for examining research and teaching partnerships that require large-scale collaborative infrastructure, for example, the recently announced Tata Institute for Genetics and Society. He will also co-Chair the newly established standing Committee on Global Affairs, comprised of representatives of the faculty, Senate and administration. The committee will meet regularly to discuss global opportunities and challenges and to review campus programs, policies and actions. This will include identifying obstacles to international engagement that may unintentionally arise from our existing procedures and policies. Our goal is to develop best practices that will facilitate cross-campus communication, strategic planning and collaboration between existing units. Dr. Schooley is well positioned to provide leadership in this area for UC San Diego.

This position was established on the recommendation of the 2015 International Strategy Workgroup, which concluded in part that, changes in global research and education call for a complementary and coordinated approach. The Workgroup’s full report can be found at:
http://evc.ucsd.edu/_files/International_Strategy_Workgroup_Report .pdf

Please join me in congratulating and supporting Dr. Schooley as he takes on this important role on behalf of the campus. These initiatives will strengthen and enhance UC San Diego’s leadership in global research, education and service.

Peter F. Cowhey Interim Executive Vice Chancellor