Dean of School of Medicine Nancy Andrews to step down in June 2017

Dr. Nancy Andrews, dean of the School of Medicine and vice chancellor for academic affairs, will step down in June 2017, the University announced Friday.

Andrews has served as dean since 2007. During her tenure, the medical school has expanded, opening its first new medical education building since the 1930s—the Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Center—and occupying space in the downtown Durham Innovation District.

The school has also increased its programming and launched new research initiatives, including MedX, a partnership with the Pratt School of Engineering and the Center for Population Health Sciences. 

Dr. A. Eugene Washington, chancellor for health affairs and president and CEO of Duke University Health System, announced that a search committee will be formed immediately to begin the search for the next medical school dean.

“From the beginning of my deanship, I’ve been committed to the idea that leadership should be refreshed periodically, and I feel that the end of my second term is the right time,” Andrews wrote in a statement to Duke faculty, students and staff. “I have finished what I set out to do when I came to Duke, and together we have done much more, in spite of the strong headwinds of a difficult NIH budget and the economic downturn.”

Andrews is not the only administrator retiring June 2017—President Richard Brodhead will be leaving the University at the same time.

Andrews also serves as the Nanaline H. Duke professor of pediatrics and a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology. Before coming to Duke in 2007, she served as dean for basic sciences and graduate studies at Harvard Medical School.

“Her support of research and faculty development and her commitment to diversity and inclusion, in particular, have the laid the foundation for the school’s continued recognition as one of our nation’s premier medical schools,” Washington said in a Duke Today release. “On behalf of the school’s faculty, staff and students and all of Duke, I want to express my sincerest appreciation for her extraordinary leadership.”