Chapter 06: An Offer from MD Anderson
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Description
Dr. DuBois begins this chapter by observing that administrators take two to three years to understand the ropes of their new roles, two to three years to set up processes, and another two to three years to reap the benefits of these processes.He next talks about stepping into the role of Director of Vanderbilt University's cancer center in 2005, because the former director was retiring and the institution wanted an internal hire. In 2006, he notes, he got a call from John Mendelsohn to talk about an opportunity to serve as Provost at MD Anderson. He explains what he learned of the situation at MD Anderson and what it might offer him. He also explains his family's reluctance to leave Nashville.
Identifier
DuBoisR_01_20181113_C06
Publication Date
11-13-2018
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD, Oral History Interview, November 13, 2018
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Joining MD Anderson/Coming to Texas; Professional Path; Evolution of Career; Joining MD Anderson; Personal Background; Obstacles, Challenges; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose; Critical Perspectives; Critical Perspectives; Leadership; On Leadership; Professional Values, Ethics, Purpose
Transcript
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
So, I was division chief for about six or seven years and I enjoyed it, but what I found throughout my career is it takes about two or three years to really understand the ropes, it takes two or three years to really maximize the process, and then the last two or three years is really just reaping the benefits of all that. I’ve sort of been in a situation where I try to do that. You know it’s about seven or eight years that you’re in a position, and I think your maximal effectiveness wanes after that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Really?
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
That’s my impression.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
There’s a lot of discussion of when should someone step down.
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
Ten years is probably ideal, but a lot of people stay much longer. Dr. Mendelsohn was president, I think for at least fifteen or sixteen years.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Sixteen years, yeah.
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
So it just depends on the scenario and the situation. What was happening was the director of the Cancer Center at Vanderbilt was wanting to retire, his name is Hal Moses, and they were looking to try to—they wanted to have an internal candidate take that on, and so they interviewed me and I’m sure they interviewed other individuals, and so I was offered the position and I had already spent a lot of time working in the Cancer Center. I was the Associate Director for Cancer Prevention, we had recruited a lot of people to the Cancer Center to do cancer epidemiology and population studies, and a whole prevention group, so I had been engaged in that all along. The Cancer Center was fairly young, I mean it didn’t get started until the early ‘90s, even though Vanderbilt has such a research prowess since the late ‘20s. Dr. Moses --you know he discovered TGF beta and is quite a scientist and he’s also a pathologist. So he had really set the tone for that Cancer Center, raised tons of money to help support it. I had worked closely with him on some of those projects and I think he thought I would be a good person to take on the job. Eventually, I had done what I had set out to do in GI, and took on another opportunity, and I was in that role for about two years and then I got a call from Dr. Mendelsohn, and I had a tough decision to make, because I had started this job—Dr. Moses had really established the Cancer Center, got it running well. My role was really to just continue getting the Cancer Center grant renewed and recruiting people, and I had been quite successful. We had a really good group that was already established by a previous director and I was just sort of tweaking it and enhancing certain things. [Redacted] It was early into my second year as the director [redacted]
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And just for the record, I wanted to say you started in the Cancer Center role in 2005.
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
[01:2056] Right. [Redacted]
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
[Redacted] I guess Dr. Mendelsohn called me about that time and we started talking about opportunities there [redacted].
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
[Redacted] I got interested and John, he’s a convincing person. He always is very positive and energetic, and he had already had a lot of success there, and so he really wanted to take what Margaret Kripke had done and even extend it further, build the research mission even greater. They had already done some strategic planning to develop new centers, new research centers, new institutes, and he had brought me into that process very early, and you know the founding provost. The reach was so much further and the size was so much larger than what I was involved in at Vanderbilt, and it was entirely focused on cancer. We didn’t have to worry about other things there and so there was an advantage to really focusing all the effort on one disease. So I took the job.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Was it a lengthy process, to kind of consider it?
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
He started calling me and I said no, I just took this job and I’m really trying to make an impact here. And I had always stayed with a job for at least five to seven years, and so it was too early to think about leaving. And my family --my children were raised in Nashville and my wife was involved in the community in a big way.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Just for the record, your wife’s name?
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
Lisa.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And I saw she’s a photographer.
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
Well, she’s done several things. She was a journalist and a writer, and she wrote this book on the history of the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, that got lots of attention, while she was there, but more recently, she’s gotten a lot more engaged in photography and travel and things like that.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And her maiden name, or does she use her maiden name professionally?
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
She took my name. I think she had some regrets about that, but her maiden name is Abrams; A-b-r-a-m-s. One of the reasons we’re here in South Carolina is that she’s originally from South Carolina, and when this job came up, her mom has been ill for quite a while and needed some attention, and there are a lot of personal reasons why this made sense, to try to come back to South Carolina.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
When were you married?
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
We were married in 1980, August 16th.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
And your kids’ names?
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
Ethan is our son and Shelly is our daughter; S-h-e-l-l-e-y.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
All right, great.
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
They all wanted to stay in Nashville, so that was a difficult move. Our son had just been born when—he was born in Johns Hopkins and we moved to Nashville when he was just tiny, and our daughter was just finishing the first grade or something.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Yeah, so their whole young lives were there.
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
They were all Nashville, they see that as their, their home really.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Their real home, yeah.
Raymond DuBois, MD, PhD:
Our daughter has moved back to Nashville, so that’s good.
Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:
Oh, okay. So a big decision, but you decided.
Recommended Citation
DuBois, Raymond N. Jr., MD, PhD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 06: An Offer from MD Anderson" (2018). Interview Chapters. 663.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/663
Conditions Governing Access
Redacted
