LINCOLN — In his first fall semester as dean of an Ohio medical school, Dr. Jeffrey Gold recalled a first-year student who tried to return his symbolic white coat hours after receiving it.
Gold said that late Friday night before classes started, students learned how their financial situation had fallen apart after their father lost his job and the family learned their mother had cancer. He explained it through tears. She also failed to submit her financial aid application on time.
Ms. Gold tried calling several people, but when they did not answer that night, they provided her with a credit card to buy textbooks. He told her student he would resolve the financial situation later, and she returned her gold card when classes started next Monday.
Four years later, she graduated at the top of her class, and her father handed Ms. Gold an envelope containing the cost of her daughter's textbooks ($164.23) in cash, including three pennies.
“That was an incredibly powerful moment for me because it told me that $160 can change someone's life,” Gold said Monday during a public forum he participated in at the university's various campuses. said in one of the. “But the even more powerful message for me is that if you treat your students like you would treat your own children, you can do anything you want to do and you can make magic happen.”
Next steps for the presidential election
On March 20, the University of Nebraska Board of Trustees unanimously selected Dr. Gold as the preferred candidate for NU's ninth president. Gold went through a 30-day review period that required meetings at campus forums in Lincoln, Omaha and Kearny, which Gold completed this week.
Gold served as president of the University of Nebraska Medical Center for 10 years and will also serve as NU's chief academic officer starting in 2021.
One of Priority Candidate's goals is for every high school student “across this great country of ours” to wake up at 4 a.m. at least once and say, “I wish I could go to Nebraska for college.” It is to do.
“We have to earn it,” Gold said.
State law allows regents to hold a final vote on Gold's candidacy as early as Saturday if they wish. The board will meet on Friday, the 30th day of Gold's public review period.
Lincoln Regent Tim Clair, who chaired the committee supporting the recent presidential election, said Monday that Nebraskans shouldn't “read too much into it” if the regents don't meet Saturday. He said a final meeting could take place next week.
Beatrice Regent Rob Shafer, the board chairman, told the Nebraska Examiner that the regents are preparing for another meeting and would like to move forward with the meeting. Schaefer hopes to have Gold attend rallies in other parts of Nebraska, including Scottsbluff, North Platte and Beatrice, which could be scheduled for next week.
Asked if he would vote for Gold as president, Schaefer said, “I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I'm excited about where we are.”
“We're going somewhere amazing.”
Many members of the NU community similarly expressed optimism, with some alarm, over the internal selection of Gold, 71, who has served as UNMC chancellor for 10 years, last week. He also served as Omaha Chancellor from 2017 until 2021, when he assumed the highest academic position. Executive Vice President and The president immediately after.
Gold's efforts throughout the forum included welcoming all students and meeting their needs. Improving mental health outcomes for NU community members. Treat faculty and staff like family. Protect academic freedom. Promote Nebraska Extension and agricultural research and listen to all stakeholders, especially students.
He also said that if NU considers structural changes such as campus consolidation (as former NU President Ted Carter suggested in his departure memo last year), it would be done with “full transparency.” He said he was deaf.
Richard Moberly, dean of the Nebraska College of Law, was in the audience and said he was excited about Gold's candidacy and had watched Gold's work at UNMC.
“If you do the same thing for our system and our university (as you did at UNMC), I’m confident we can go somewhere great,” Moberly said. .
Mr. Moberly asked Mr. Gold to explain how he approached centralization in NU's central administration, but Mr. Gold said that, largely due to budgetary concerns over the past decade, he had not given power to the NU provost's office. There is no question that centralization is progressing.
However, Gold added that it is important to consider whether budget interests drive NU's mission, or whether the mission drives profits.
“If you have a strong mission and everyone is clear on that mission and the ambitious goals of where we are going, the margins will follow,” Gold said.
Growth during the “financial crisis”
Over the past decade, Mr. Gold has become accustomed to budget cuts, and if approved, one of his first tasks will be to confront a continuing $58 million shortfall due largely to inflation and declining enrollment. It will be.
Gold told the UNMC community that many universities are facing similar “financial blues,” but NU's budget deficit also comes as leaders hoped for new revenue that did not materialize. He said this was because he continued. Instead of finding new strategic revenue sources or making cuts, leaders then used the lump sum as a bailout.
In 2023, UNMC was the only NU campus to increase enrollment and has continued major infrastructure projects, including a partnership with Kearney College's campus for a regional medical complex.
The medical center has also been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to conduct world-class research into some of the most notorious diseases, including pancreatic cancer.
Gold, a cardiac surgeon who is licensed in surgery and medicine in four states other than Nebraska, said he hasn't stopped his health research with colleagues across the country during his tenure as chancellor. His research centered around epidemiology, health outcomes, and disparities. Once Gold is elected president, he said, no one can take his job away.
Asked Tuesday if he had any ideas that could be moved to other parts of NU, Gold said only, “Yes, absolutely,” and said one idea is to add exciting programs rather than cut back. . He said that was one of the factors that led to the increase in enrollment at UNMC.
Association of American Universities
Over the past year, Gold and other NU leaders have praised the goal of rejoining the Association of American Universities. Members voted for Kick out University of Nebraska-Lincoln It was founded in 2011 after 102 years as part of the organization.
NU aims to defy history by taking the first step by reporting UNL and UNMC research spending as one, becoming the first former member to be invited, which immediately boosted NU's ranking .
Gold said again this week that AAU is more than just a “merit badge” and will unlock more opportunities, similar to what happened after UNL joined the Big Ten. This provided UNMC with new research capabilities.
Invitation to rejoin AAU requires improvement of NU Certain metrics such as graduation and retention rates, faculty awards and academy membership.
“We are definitely rowing upstream on a fast-flowing river of competition,” Gold said.
Although this mission has caused some in the NU community, particularly the University of Nebraska at Kearney and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, to worry that doing so will weaken other parts of NU, Professor Gold said the AAU The goal is to “improve the university system as a whole,” he said. ”
“UNK just needs to be at the top of their game,” Gold told a member of the UNK audience last week. “UNK needs to be a campus that not only serves the community, but also sets an example of what success looks like.”
impact every day
Gold shared many of the same stories throughout the forum, including one about a first-year medical student, and connected them to his vision for the future if he is confirmed as the successor to former NU President Ted Carter.
From growing up in near-poverty and attending college as a first-generation student on an engineering scholarship to what he learned while working in New York after the terrorist attacks, Mr. Gold has written about his decision to run for president. Outlined many moments. September 11, 2001.
While attending Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, Mr. Gold served as Faculty Senate, where he learned about shared governance and collaboration with all stakeholders. But in 2001, another lesson taught him the value of every moment and ultimately led him to leadership. He was scheduled to become medical director in Toledo, Ohio, before coming to Nebraska.
For five days after sunset on September 11th, Gold volunteered in triage and search-and-rescue operations near the former site of the World Trade Center towers.
“You could literally reach out and hold air in your hands,” Gold recalled.
He dug through the rubble of what was once the Twin Towers and said all the nearly 3,000 people who died in that morning's attack had ever done was get up, kiss their children goodbye and go to work. I recognized it. However, they never returned home.
“It was a message that if you really want to do something, if you really want to have an impact, you never know when your cards are going to be ripped,” Gold said. “We don’t know when that impact will no longer be realized.”
