President Phil Hanlon ’77 and Provost Carolyn Dever announced today that Duane Compton, professor of biochemistry and senior associate dean for research, will serve as interim dean of Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, effective tomorrow.

Compton received his PhD from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 1988 and completed his postdoctoral training in the field of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He was recruited to the faculty at Dartmouth in 1993, and is a leader in graduate and medical student education and a distinguished National Institutes of Health-funded researcher. He recently received an NIH MERIT Award in recognition of his research on the mechanisms of chromosome segregation.

As interim dean, Compton will report to Dever and work closely with both College and Geisel leadership to ensure that the medical school continues to make progress on a number of important initiatives.

“This is an exciting and dynamic time at Dartmouth. As we look to expand our impact and take this already great institution to new levels, Geisel will play a crucial role in our success. We look forward to partnering with Duane and the faculty, students, and staff of the Geisel School of Medicine in the months ahead as we work to ensure Geisel’s legacy of excellence,” says President Hanlon.

Read moreGeisel Rises in Medical School RankingsDuane Compton’s laboratoryThe Geisel School of Medicine Website

Compton takes over for Wiley “Chip” Souba, who served as Geisel dean for four years, through June 30, and decided not to seek reappointment to a second term.

“We are living in an era of unprecedented advances in medical discovery and implementation,” Hanlon says. “However, against that backdrop, academic medical centers in the U.S. are facing unparalleled economic challenges. We have all pulled together during the past year to address Geisel’s financial challenges while setting a course to keep the Geisel School of Medicine at the forefront of education, research, and clinical practice. That work will continue with the capable, practiced leadership of Duane Compton.”

Dever says Geisel “is an essential part of the robust academic community at Dartmouth and is at the forefront of medical education and practice. By driving advances in basic and clinical research and in outcomes-based medicine and health care delivery science, the research mission of the Geisel School of Medicine is focused, forceful, and innovative.

”Geisel excels in equipping our graduates with the skills to tackle significant scientific problems, and provide excellent patient care, and also the wisdom to create a more effective healthcare system, affecting our nation person by person for generations to come,“ says Dever.

”Dartmouth’s partners in Dartmouth-Hitchcock leadership have pledged their support for Geisel as they too navigate an increasingly challenging external environment,“ says Hanlon. ”We applaud the incredible contributions that faculty, students, and staff are making in these arenas and we are grateful for their continued partnership."