News & Events

Reception Honors New Department Chairs Rock and Stewart

Thursday, January 18, 2007

At a January 17^th reception in HSFII, David Stewart, MD, MPH, and Peter Rock, MD, were formally welcomed into their positions as chairmen of the departments of Family & Community Medicine and Anesthesiology, respectively. Joining the current dean of the medical school, E. Albert Reece, MD, MBA, PhD, to honor them was dean emeritus Donald E. Wilson, MD, MACP, who appointed Stewart and Rock before his retirement, and Jeffrey Rivest, president and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC).

"I'm truly delighted to have leaders like Peter and David at this school," said Dean Reece. "I was very pleased when I heard Dean Wilson had made those appointments."

Rivest agreed. "I am particularly pleased to have someone who has been a part of the medical center family for so long be rewarded with a new role such as this," he said of Dr. Stewart, who is celebrating his 20^th anniversary with the School of Medicine this year. "He's an enormous resource at the medical center, both to patients and to employees, many of whom call him their doctor. Making this official (Stewart served as acting chairman for three years) is an honor he's long deserved."

Stewart confessed, "I didn't realize I've been here that long. I thought it was 18 years." Yet he does know what has kept him here. "It's the relationships," he says. "The people I've met and worked with and treated, from my very first days in Baltimore to today."

Rock has his own history in Baltimore, where he worked early in his medical career before moving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Rivest is confident that Rock's return to the area will have an impact. "I was very impressed by his focus on growing the program in anesthesiology, particularly the residency program," he explains. "And he had the courage to accept this position knowing that we were about to go through a transition at the dean level."

Rock admits he wasn't feeling all that courageous. "There was a certain amount of terror in taking this job," he said. "But I saw it as a tremendous opportunity. I'm thrilled to be here and excited by the job I have ahead of me."