Youthful decisions led dean to life in healing
That Cleveland fellow had hoped for a career in the fine arts — writing, publishing, directing plays and visiting art galleries — but never made it happen. Instead, he took a long road to Pittsburgh.
That actually is the good news that continues radiating forever outward from the city and region.
Because as a young man, Dr. Arthur Levine decided on a whim to become a physician — a decision that eventually led him to become dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and converting it into one of the nation’s finest, with further highlights as senior vice chancellor in the development and advancement of Pitt’s many health services schools.
The many advancements he initiated and led in education, research and recruitment of key faculty, researchers and leaders generated many thousands of jobs while helping Pitt and UPMC improve and expand its health care empire throughout southwestern Pennsylvania and far beyond. But the times are changing. On June 1, Dr. Levine stepped down from the dean and vice chancellor positions he held for 22 years, with Dr. Anantha Shekhar replacing him, as announced in January.
For Dr. Levine, 83 years isn’t anything close to retirement age. It simply was the right time and age for a career pivot. Vowing to continue working for the rest of his days, he now holds the new post as executive director of Pitt’s Brain Institute.
“I obviously had a successful career,” he said. “But my career isn’t over. I’m starting my third career now.”
In honor of Dr. Levine’s long tenure, Pitt officials held a surprise drive-by parade past his Shadyside home that featured 75 vehicles and many well-wishers.
“I think it was the right thing for me to do, given that I’m almost 84 and think it is reasonable,” he said. “Life becomes more fragile at this age, and I didn’t ever want to leave the university or UPMC at a time when my head was drooping and not being able to groom a successor.
“I am in good health and there’s nothing missing upstairs — at least not that I know of,” he said.
Unexpected physician
The eve before graduating from Columbia University, a young Arthur Levine was questioned by his dad about his career plans. Plans?
The comparative literature major and editor of the university literary magazine was interested in fine arts, writing, directing off-Broadway plays and frequenting art galleries, and he wanted that to continue on his dad’s dollar.
But he belted out a quickwitted response to his father, a Cleveland attorney involved with real estate.
“I remembered that the one species of mammal with the longest period of dependency on its parents was the medical student,” Dr. Levine recalled.
No, not the elephant, orangutan or killer whale.
“I didn’t want to leave my fiscal dependency on my dad,” he said.
So he told Dad what Dad wanted to hear — that he wanted to become a medical doctor, with that response paving a father-dependent financial pathway for several years to follow.
But Dad was right in buying what his son was selling: Dr. Levine’s career, in time, featured leadership rather than dependency.
The son’s split-second graduation-eve proclamation served as an unlikely prelude to 31 productive years with the National Institutes of Health, beginning with the National Cancer Institute and ending with a 16-year stint as scientific director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
That was followed by 22 successful years as the John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and senior vice chancellor of Pitt’s health sciences (overseeing Pitt’s nursing, dentistry, public health, pharmacy, and health and rehabilitation sciences schools).
His ploy also nurtured a deep love for science coupled with a natural talent for leadership and management that has become legendary at Pitt, with some respectfully jesting that he has been Napoleonic without the Waterloo.
Dr. Levine also championed a long string of ambitious projects, faculty appointments and educational and facility upgrades with an authoritarian demeanor that required that expectations and deadlines be met.
The results are a highly ranked medical school and health sciences curricula, a world-renowned faculty and construction now underway of clinical research centers focused on ophthalmology, heart disease, immunotherapy, organ transplantation and cancer.
“I think leadership involves intelligence, and creativity has to involve curiosity, discipline and strategic thinking,” Dr. Levine said. “I think it has to involve fire in the belly. You have to be hungry, right? And I think you have to be fair.”
With age comes wisdom, he said.
“You have to be tough but fair,” he said. “You also have to be a risk taker but a measured risk taker. That’s the recipe.”
The art of science
Today, Pitt’s med school stands as one of the nation’s finest by ranking fifth nationwide in NIH funding with $530 million in grants for 2020 and strong rankings in more subjective rating systems. Each million in grants generates up to 36 new jobs, Dr. Levine said. That would translate into the creation or sustenance of up to 19,000 jobs.
His and Pitt’s focus on grants, new buildings and revenue has drawn some controversy and criticism along the way. But he counters that high levels of grant money reflect the top-caliber research professors and physicians he has recruited, which in turn bolsters medical education and opportunity.
With Dr. Levine now at the Brain Institute, his own lab will continue researching how brain neurons repair their own damaged DNA. An inability to make those repairs may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease and could serve as a target for treatment.
“By understanding these processes, researchers come closer to preventing and delaying the diseases of aging, such as dementia and cancer,” a Pitt news release states. “His strong support of research and clinical training in geriatrics and gerontology helped make [Pitt] one of the strongest institutions in both fields.”
This year, the University of Pittsburgh Press also published his book, “Jumping Spiders and One-Eyed Lambs” — a compilation of essays he wrote over the past two decades for Pitt Med Magazine that integrated his love for writing and science.
“Art Levine offers prognoses and prescriptions for the most vexing health issues facing our nation,” Google Books said of his work. “In other essays, he shines a light on biologies that make us tick. Throughout these pages, Art Levine’s love for the humanities is as evident as his fascination with nature.”
The Levine legacy
Dr. Jeremy Berg, Pitt’s associate senior vice chancellor for science strategy and planning in the health sciences, said his most telling experience with Dr. Levine was “his broad and deep knowledge of the faculty.”
“Over the course of more than eight years at Pitt, I have probably mentioned [to him] more than 100 faculty members in the School of Medicine and the other heath science schools,” Dr. Berg said. “In essentially every case, he knew what they were working on and how they were doing in substantial detail.”
Only when involved in finding Dr. Levine’s replacement did Dr. Berg realize how Dr. Levine knew so much about the faculty and their research.
“He would take home 20 to 40 papers published by the faculty every night, read at least the abstracts and often the full papers and think about who he should connect them with or what else he can do to help them succeed,” Dr. Berg said. “This reflects both his deep commitment to science and scientists, but also a discipline about trying to ensure that the resources invested by the university in recruiting and supporting faculty [are] put to optimal use.”
Dr. Levine’s “tough and fair” approach, he said, simply requires a person to “take the lead on any effort” and be “accountable for keeping the effort moving.”
Former Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg offered extensive praise of Dr. Levine, who faced a daunting task upon his arrival at Pitt to make a good medical school better.
“Art was a transformative leader who greatly exceeded our very high expectations,” Mr. Nordenberg said, noting that his key goal was to land Pitt among NIH’s top five universities, which he accomplished. “Given the quality of the institutions at that level and the fact that each of those universities is always working as hard as it can to rise in those rankings, that level of achievement is incredible,” he said.
Dr. Levine’s success is the product of an “extraordinary mind, boundless curiosity, an unerring sense of the directions in which science will be moving, a truly distinctive ability to assess human talent and commitment, and almost superhuman stamina,” Mr. Nordenberg said, noting that he’s well aware of Dr. Levine’s skill “because he also used it on me.”
Twenty years ago, he and Dr. Levine were flying out West when the latter opened his briefcase and handed the chancellor two resumes while explaining why Pitt needed to hire Drs. Yuan Chang and Patrick Moore, a wife-and-husband team then at Columbia University.
“Art believed passionately that their basic-science work had the potential to transform our understanding of cancer,” Mr. Nordenberg said. “He successfully recruited them to Pitt, and they have done pioneering work in discovering cancer-causing viruses.”
On another occasion, Dr. Levine handed him the resume of Andrew Schwartz, a San Diego neurobiologist.
“As Art explained it to me, Dr. Schwartz was laying the foundation for a day when paralyzed patients could control prosthetic devices through the power of their thoughts,” Mr. Nordenberg said.
Dr. Levine recruited Dr. Schwartz, who led development of a prototype robotic arm with which people with paralysis can use their minds to complete tasks.
That trailblazing development “was featured when President Barack Obama came to Pittsburgh near the end of his second term to promote the power of science,” Mr. Nordenberg said.
“Dr. Levine is one of the most accomplished academic leaders I have ever known,” he said. “To me, his extraordinary understandings of science, his exceptional ability to judge talent, and his enormous capacity for hard work are what really drove his successes.”
Cleveland to Pittsburgh
Dr. Levine was born in Cleveland to Russian immigrants who came to the United States in the wake of anti-Jewish pogroms. At 13, young Arthur was sent off to a Massachusetts boarding school.
Eventually he earned that medical degree from the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University before completing his pediatrics internship at the University of Minnesota, where he then earned a fellowship in hematology and biochemical genetics.
After arriving at Pitt in 1998 following his NIH stint, he ushered the med school to its next level of prominence, with rankings in recent years including it among the nation’s best.
During his time as dean, one of the longest tenures in the nation, he recruited 28 of 31 department chair positions and created 10 new medical school departments including developmental biology, structural biology and critical care medicine — the nation’s first such department. He also helped establish Pitt’s Brain Institute, the Center for Vaccine Research, the Drug Discovery institute, the Institute for Precision Medicine and the Institute on Aging, among others.
Pitt also created the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, also one of the nation’s first. That institute has received $320 million in federal funding in support of 2,000 scientific investigators and more than 4,000 research studies. Those totals, Dr. Levine said, reflect the quality of faculty and leadership he has recruited.
Too few biotech company spinoffs resulting from Pitt research represent his biggest regret.
“I think we need to do that,” he said. “We now have the talent base to make that happen.”
Nevertheless, Dr. Levine said, “At heart, I’m a physician and my interest is in science — my life as a molecular biologist, based on learning something new that hopefully will ultimately benefit fellow man. That is what I believe.”