Vision
The concept of a "common enterprise" university refers to a scholarly community built around the shared development, creation, and continuing dissemination of knowledge. This stands in contradistinction to the traditional research model of the academy, in which individual investigators each tend to their own fiefs, with little awareness of the larger university community and with little regard for its other members—except, perhaps, to compete with them on occasion. This ideal of a community united by the principle of a shared pursuit of knowledge was recently emphasized by John Sexton, the current President of NYU. It provides the basis for the new directions that the Department of Pathology is pursuing and will guide us through the changes we are undertaking to establish and consolidate the Department’s role for the next decade.
The Department of Pathology serves as a linchpin for NYU School of Medicine since it is at once a sizeable clinical department and the largest basic science department of the school. It is home to a large and thriving graduate program in Molecular Oncology and Immunology, a residency program, and it is substantially involved in medical student teaching. The area of experimental pathology, defined as research that takes an organismal pathophysiological focus, has long been a hallmark of this department. We believe that some of the most innovative discoveries will be made at the boundaries between traditional disciplines. We have established a Pathobiology program that trains individuals in broad areas of biomedical research rather than restricting them within narrow specialties. PhD students can now pursue research projects while learning clinical principles with a mentoring committee of basic scientists and clinicians. By building on these strengths, we have laid the groundwork for large-scale collaborative efforts and have created the infrastructure necessary for excellent translational research. In conjunction with this experimental spirit, the many resources that we have at our disposal promise to be even more beneficial when they are shared in the service of our common ambitions as well.
The key to our growth now lies in an integrative approach that provides a nexus of clinical and basic science for translational research endeavors. This integrative approach will ensure that future pathologists can move easily between the foundations of basic research, translational science, and clinical medicine.
We have recruited faculty of extraordinary promise and we are proud of our colleagues’ stellar achievements. Because we understand the centrality of education, we are determined to invest in the future of research and clinical service with the foundations of superlative teaching. The spirit of a common academic enterprise requires the communal efforts of our faculty, staff, students, and fellows, so that together we can nurture the Department’s development and foster the growth, education, and participation of all its members. This will allow us to transform our already distinguished Department into one of the great departments of pathology in the nation.
