Dr. Loretta Jackson-Williams has a new title for pretty much the same job, working in the same office that now has a different name. The changes, announced this summer, may sound like little things - "vice dean for medical education," instead of "associate dean for academic affairs;" and "Office of Medical of Education" instead of "Academic Affairs, School of Medicine." But, as she says, "little things can be really important." Things like a motivating word from a teacher, a frog in a high school biology class, a garden full of hot misery and field peas, and a small-town upbringing with sidewalks and roller skates. Little things that leave big impressions, as they have with her. These things have followed her throughout her career and life, which she describes by dwelling mostly on the instructive, cheerful and sometimes perplexing details - like the time she considered becoming a lawyer. "But I realized that lawyers often become judges, and making life-and-death decisions was not for me," she said. "Think about the irony of that." The irony is that she not only became a physician, but she also got her start in the emergency room, where life
-and
-death is your bread and butter. Today, she is also a professor of medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine. "If I hadn't become a doctor, I might have been a teacher, which I am sort of, anyway," she said. Her affinity for students is obvious in her work as Medical Center leader, said Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. |