Mentor’s lessons resonate with first Chen Chair holder

Published on Monday, November 8, 2021

By: Ruth Cummins

Dr. C.J. Chen, the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s former Department of Ophthalmology chair, is one of Dr. Kimberly Crowder’s longtime role models, and not just as a beloved professor in medical school.

“He is probably one of my most influential mentors, and he taught me how to be an ophthalmologist,” Crowder said. “He also taught me the importance of the different roles of an ophthalmologist at an academic medical center.

“Dr. Chen always realized the importance of patient care; first; resident education, second; and choosing and retaining students and faculty members, third. That’s the role of a department chair.”

Crowder, a 1999 graduate of the School of Medicine at UMMC who became department chair in 2015, now has an additional tie to her former coworker. She is holder of the first Drs. C.J. and Lin Chen Endowed Chair for Excellence in Ophthalmology.

“This is a huge honor,” said Crowder, a comprehensive ophthalmologist providing primary eye care. After completing her ophthalmology residency at UMMC in 2003, she immediately joined the department's faculty, serving for a time as the program director for ophthalmology residents.

“She will do the best job to make this department the best in the country,” Chen, now retired in San Jose, Calif., said of Crowder, who served as an associate professor of ophthalmology from 2012 until becoming chair. “She is so focused, and she is not afraid to speak out for the department.”

Chen, a native of Taiwan, came to the Medical Center in 1979 as an assistant professor of surgery. He was a noted researcher and one of the world’s premier experts in surgical management of vitreoretinal diseases. Chen served as chair from 2000 to 2015, giving up that leadership post right before Crowder took the reins, but remaining on the faculty until retirement.

He is currently professor emeritus of ophthalmology. His late wife, Dr. Lin Chen, was a retired ophthalmologist.

The department created the endowment in July 2015 with an initial gift of $50,000 from Chen and his family. The gift was not just an expression of his love of the department he served for much of his professional career, but of his 36-year commitment extending to the Medical Center and to his adopted state. “The longest I’ve lived anywhere is Mississippi,” Chen said.

By December 2020, the fund had grown to almost $234,000. The Chen family then contributed another gift to bring the endowment to more than $1 million, the amount required for an endowed chair. 

“I want to make sure that this is one of the top programs in the country,” Chen said in making the gift.  “This is a time to give back.

“Also, I want to make sure there will be a continuity of the excellent lecture series established under my name and endowed by my colleagues before I retired,” Chen said.

“This is not really a huge department, but the quality of the faculty is very high. In quite a lot of areas in clinical research, we were in the forefront. We were one of the few study centers in the country conducting a specialty type of study called OCT angiography,” he said.

The department has grown to include eight full-time and three part-time physicians; four teaching-only faculty who are full-time physicians at the G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Jackson; one part-time teaching and research ophthalmic pathologist at the VA;  and 16 ophthalmology residents. The department also added its first full-time faculty optometrist.

Chen’s philanthropy will make it possible for the department to continue growing and thriving, Crowder said. “This will aid in the future recruitment of faculty and in research and clinical projects. There is such a need to make sure patient and research goals can be met.”

Crowder’s leadership of Ophthalmology will be a game-changer, Chen said.

“She will make a big drive for her faculty to focus on research and patient care,” he said. “Her energy level is so high, and she brings that to everybody else. She’s incredible.”

“We are incredibly grateful for the Chen family and their support of the Department of Ophthalmology,” said Meredith Aldridge, the Medical Center’s executive director of the Office of Development.

“An endowed chair allows the department the opportunity to fund critical research and training needs, provides salary support, and helps meet other mission-based needs. The impact of an endowed chair extends well beyond its holder to facilitate growth across providers, fellows, residents and students.”

Chen was a frequent lecturer at UMMC and taught School of Medicine ophthalmology students both in the classroom and through his editing and co-authoring of the textbook Clinical OCT Angiography Atlas. It examines optical coherence tomography angiography and its use in diagnosing ocular diseases and disorders.

Chen returned to campus in August 2021 for the UMMC Ophthalmology Update Conference. Chen asked his son, Dr. Royce Chen, to give the Dr. C.J. Chen Endowment Retinal Lecture at the meeting.

The younger Chen is a retinal specialist on the faculty at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. Royce Chen also serves as Columbia’s ophthalmology residency program director, a role his father held at UMMC from 2000 until Crowder was named to that position in 2007.

“I hand-picked Dr. Crowder to be my residency program director,” Chen said. “I was able to watch her closely, and we published some papers together.”

If not for Chen and his wife’s generous giving in addition to the giving of children Alice, Grace and Royce, all of them physicians, the department would not be what it is today, Crowder said. “To have his name on this chair is so fitting.

“I’m so grateful that Dr. Chen and his family chose to do this to benefit the department,” Crowder said. “It helps solidify this department’s future.”