Robert M. D’Alessandri, M.D., dean of medicine and vice president for health sciences at West Virginia University, will relinquish one of those titles next year.

“The expansion of WVU ’s statewide role in health education and healthcare has created the need for a full-time vice president for health sciences and a full-time dean of medicine,”D’Alessandri said.”I intend to step down as dean sometime in 2004.”

As vice president for health sciences, D’Alessandri oversees four health schoolsmedicine, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing. Each, except for medicine, has a full time dean. Educational offerings at WVU ’s health sciences schools have expanded rapidly in the past decade, with new doctoral-level programs in nursing, pharmacy and physical therapy, and master’s programs in public health and occupational therapy.

Since 1992, when he added the vice president’s role, WVU has assumed responsibility for nursing programs at WVU -Parkersburg and the WVU Institute of Technology; expanded programs at its Charleston Division, and established a campus in the Eastern Panhandle. The Health Sciences Center has also established a statewide network of rural health education sites that allow all health professions students to train in the types of settings where they may someday practice.

D’Alessandri also serves as a board director of WVU Hospitals and the West Virginia United Health System. Medical services offered around the state have grown, including the recent implementation of angioplasty services at United Hospital Center in Clarksburg, and an agreement with Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital in Parkersburg to start an open-heart surgery program.

D’Alessandri was recently named to the board that will establish West Virginia’s physician-directed medical liability insurance program. He is also the president of the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, which is planning a multimillion-dollar research facility on the Morgantown campus.

West Virginia’s Higher Education Policy Commission, until recently, had a vice chancellor for health sciences who helped plan, coordinate and develop statewide health professions education. That post was recently eliminated, and some of the duties split among the leaders of the state’s medical schools.

Dr. D’Alessandri intends to continue as the academic leader of the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, he said. He will hold both posts until a new dean of medicine is selected

“This was a difficult decision for me, because being the dean of the School of Medicine is so important to me,”he said.”But with the expanding role WVU must play in improving the health of the state, I know that there will be times when as vice president I will be at the other campuses and in different parts of the state away from the HSC .

“With the start of construction and development of the HSC Master Plan, the continuing statewide and campuswide duties of the vice president, and the final effort associated with our Capital Campaign, it’s time to separate the duties of the dean and the vice president,”D’Alessandri said.

“Dr. D’Alessandri is a key member of the WVU leadership team,”said University President David C. Hardesty, Jr.”As a full time vice president, he will be able to devote more time to developing the strategic direction WVU must maintain as West Virginia’s foremost health care education institution, and foremost provider of quality healthcare.”

A search committee will be formed this summer, with the goal of naming a dean for the medical school by the end of the year. The new dean would likely not begin work until the summer of 2004. D’Alessandri joined the WVU faculty in 1977. He was named dean of medicine in 1989 and added the vice president for health sciences post in 1992.