Department of Psychiatry - VCU School of Medicine

Dear Colleague:

In the last few months we have made very important progress developing endowed sup-port for educational programs. These endowments will provide funding for education in perpetuity.

I am very grateful to Dr. John Urbach for establishing the Rindler Urbach Psychiatry Residents Education Fund. This endowment is in honor of Dr. Urbach’s late aunt and uncle who were refugees from World War II Europe. The proceeds from this fund will provide books and supplies for our psychiatry trainees.

In addition to this good news, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Mimi Pizzani established the Joel J. Silverman, M.D. Teaching Excellence Award endowment to annually support the efforts of an outstanding junior faculty teacher. This fund will recognize a faculty member who has achieved excellence in teaching. Dr. Pizzani worked very hard to raise support and I am honored that she named this fund in my honor.

Mrs. Ruth McDonough, longtime friend of Psychiatry and wife of Dr. William McDonough, who was a gradu-ate of our department and a member of our Clinical Faculty for many, many years, has established the Ruth and William McDonough Professorship in Graduate Psychiatric Education. The proceeds from this fund will support a professor specializing in graduate psychiatric education.

These three funds will synergize to strengthen our department’s educational work. Each fund is accepting additional donations. Please let our Director of Development, Rupa Murthy, know if you wish to contribute or if you have thoughts about developing ongoing support in additional educational or research areas.

Speaking of research, I am pleased to announce the hiring of Dr. Michael Mason, as Assoc. Professor of Psychiatry. Dr. Mason is a child psychologist and funded researcher. He is a produc-tive, mid-career scholar who is bringing funded research to VCU. In addition to doing his own research, Dr. Mason will mentor scholarship in child psychiatry.

Dr. Kenneth Kendler will be receiving the Delay Prize for Excellence in Psychiatric Research from the World Psychiatric Association this September in Buenos Aires. He is the second North American to receive this prestigious award. We are very proud of his work and the international recognition of Ken, the Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics and our department.

Congratulations to Dr. Alex Trutia for organizing our Fifth Summer Institute for Psychiatry. Annually, we host medical students from VCU and from around the country for a week long experience learning about Psychiatry. This year we taught nine students, three from VCU. The students received both didactic and clinical experiences and enjoyed meeting our faculty and residents in a relaxed social setting. One wrote to Dr. Trutia afterwards: “Thank you for letting me participate in your program and giving me the opportunity to meet so many inspiring people and gain insight into the work they do. I really appreciate all of the work you did putting this program together.”

Congratulations to Dr. Ananda Pandurangi who was just elected to the Board of MCVP.

Enjoy your summer.

Please CLICK HERE for the complete current Chairman's Letter.