UNLV could hemmorhage funds, talent if Jessup left
“I was really stunned that the regents would think that they could find somebody better than him — somebody with a bigger vision and more to offer.”
UNLV’S medical school could suffer major losses in funding and talent if UNLV President Len Jessup leaves Las Vegas, the dean of the medical school said.
Barbara Atkinson, who took charge of the medical school about eight months before Jessup became president in 2015, said the disruption in leadership threatened to halt progress in the development of the school, which in turn could prompt administrators to seek opportunities elsewhere.
Atkinson would face an uncertain future herself. Although she said she had no plans to abandon the school, she — like Jessup — has faced public criticism from some members of the Nevada Board of Regents.
“I hope the school is on track now to be able to get what it needs to have done, but there are people who’d like to have me fired or ousted one way or another, and if that should happen perhaps some of the people I’ve recruited will want to leave too,” she said. “People get choices, and if they’re very good people they can go anywhere they want to go — just as Len could go to a school with more prestige than this one if he really wanted to go.”
Atkinson said she was shocked when Jessup, amid pressure from a faction of members of the Nevada Board of Regents, announced Wednesday he was looking for opportunities at other universities.
“I was really stunned that the regents would think that they could find somebody better than him — somebody with a bigger vision and more to offer,” she said.
Jessup’s announcement has Barbara Atkinson, dean of the UNLV School of Medicine
already affected the medical school. It prompted the Engelstad Foundation to rescind a $14 million gift it had provided for construction of an instructional building for the school. In turn, a megadonor who provided a $25 million gift that was matched by the state said she was reconsidering that gift and future contributions.
Atkinson said losing the gifts could significantly delay plans to increase the size of the school, which currently is limited to class sizes of 60 students. The average class size of a medical school in a university the size of UNLV is about 180, she said, and classes at the University of Kansas Medical Center, which she directed before coming to UNLV, were at 225 students when she left.
“It probably could delay the process a year or two or potentially more if other donors decide to not support the school,” she said.
Atkinson said she believed Jessup, who is in the third year of a five-year contract, wanted to stay in Nevada. Should he leave, she said, there would almost certainly be a chilling effect among potential candidates to succeed him.
“You have to say that it’s not