HJAR Sep/Oct 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  SEP / OCT 2022 11 Dianne Hartley, Editor Thank you for taking time to meet today. You have been exec- utive vice chancellor of UAMS and dean of the College of Medicine a little over a year now. What drew you to academics and UAMS, and when did being a dean become an aspiration? Susan Smyth, MD, PhD I was attracted to UAMS because of the outstanding lead- ership of the chancellor and his team and the vision of UAMS for making Arkansas a healthier state. As the product of public education, myself, I really have bought into the very specific and special role of public institutions in academics and in health- care, and having the opportunity to be part of an academic medical center that serves an entire state and plays such a critical role in a state really was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down. I knew in high school that I wanted to obtain MD and PhD level training. I don’t know why because there’s not another physician or really a biomedical scientist in my family, so how I came up with that is a bit beyond me. But, I entered college knowing that I wanted to do a dual degree. Once that decision was made, academics really became the natural choice for me. I will say that I did flirt a little bit early in my career with going into industry, into pharma, because you can have such an impact by doing drug discovery development on an industry level. But at the end of the day, my heart is with academics and the entwined missions of clinical care, research, educa- tion, and community service. Thinking about becoming a dean was a much more recent development. It cer- tainly is something that I’d thought about for a couple of years, but it was really when chancellor Patterson reached out to me and said there was an opportunity here in Arkansas and asked if I would consider it that I seriously thought that maybe this is what I ought to do next. Editor You took over the role of overseeing the education of most of Arkansas’ future MDs during a pandemic. What was that like? Smyth The pandemic has certainly been a challenge. It has challenged us clini- cally from a research perspective and educationally. It’s an unprecedented time, and it really required a reframing of how we do everything from how we train and educate medical students to how we do research, and how we deliver clinical care. It’s been an opportunity for our teams to come together and face that challenge together. It’s something I think we’re very proud of in terms of the response at UAMS, and at the end of the day, hopefully, we’re a stronger institution for what we’ve gone through and that there are some silver lin- ings, some real positives that will come out of the great tragedy. Editor Much has been said about the two lost years of education during the pan- demic. Are students entering the medi- cal school today as qualified as those pre-pandemic? Smyth Students certainly, from an aca- demic perspective, have all of the same qualifications. It varies, because things are handled a little differently across the coun- try, but what they may not have as much experience with are some of the more direct patient care experiences that they Susan Smyth, MD, PhD, is a nationally known cardiologist and translational scientist with extensive clinical, research, and academic leadership experience. She began serving as UAMS executive vice chancellor and College of Medicine dean in June 2021. Smyth was recruited to UAMS from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, where she had served as the Jeff Gill Professor of Cardiology, chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, and director of the Gill Heart and Vascular Institute since 2011. Among many other leadership posts during her 15 years at Kentucky, she was senior associate director of the Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science from 2015-2021 and director of the MD/PhD dual degree program from 2008-2019. Since 2006, Smyth has served as a cardiologist and funded investigator for the VA Health Care System. She has lent her expertise and service to numerous national scientific panels and professional organizations. Smyth is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and past president of the Association of University Cardiologists. She is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) and of the American Heart Association and has served in leadership roles in both organizations. Smyth graduated summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, with a Bachelor of Arts in biology, before earning a doctorate in pharmacology and a medical degree from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She completed a residency in internal medicine, including a year as chief resident, at University Medical Center in Stony Brook, New York. She continued training with cardiology fellowships at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York and the University of North Carolina, where she joined the faculty in 2001. Smyth was recruited to the University of Kentucky in 2006.