U. of Chicago Psychiatry Research Team Makes Crosstown Move; Chancellor of North Carolina School of the Arts to Step Down

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By MICHELLE DIAMENT and ROBIN WILSON

MEDICAL PROBLEMS: A 40-member research team in child psychiatry, including eight professors, is leaving the School of Medicine at the University of Chicago to move across town to the University of Illinois at Chicago. The exodus follows Chicago's ouster last fall of the chief of the child-and-adolescent-psychiatry unit.

The team is moving on July 1 to Illinois's Institute for Juvenile Research and taking $10-million in grant money with it.

Trouble began last November, when the University of Chicago removed Bennett L. Leventhal as chief of child psychiatry. Mr. Leventhal is a well-known expert on autism and child-attention disorders and a frequent source on the subjects for television and newspaper reports. The university said the unit needed "a significant shift in leadership" if it wanted to "continue to attract first-rate new faculty." But Mr. Leventhal, and professors who had worked with him, saw his removal as an attempt to marginalize the unit. They approached the University of Illinois about the possibility of moving.

"The message from the University of Chicago was quite clear," says Mr. Leventhal, 55: "This is not a priority area for this place."

Lauren S. Wakschlag, a specialist in preschool behavior problems and one of the professors who is leaving, says, "It is sad to see what's been a very productive center at the University of Chicago see such destructive action."

Chicago didn't do much to hang on to the researchers. "There was not an all-out, full-court press to retain them," John Easton, a university spokesman, said in a statement. But he also said the university is in the midst of "an ambitious plan" to rebuild the child-psychiatry unit and is looking for a new leader.

Meanwhile, Chicago's School of Medicine has just lured Joe G.N. Garcia and 12 professors away from the Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Garcia, 50, will be chairman of the school's department of medicine. He and his colleagues will bring $30-million in research grants with them to Chicago.

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STEPPING DOWN: Facing budget cuts, shaky relations with faculty members, and declining enrollment, the chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts will leave the job this summer, citing personal reasons.

Wade Hobgood, 51, has been in the post since 2000. The decision to leave was difficult, he says in a written statement, but "the financial challenges we have faced have detoured my plans for the school, and now the time has come to move forward."

The academic year began with a state audit showing financial mismanagement at the public institution. All of the problems reflected in the audit have been rectified, Mr. Hobgood says.

Nonetheless, financial issues loom. The school faces deep budget cuts and, because it has chosen not to increase enrollment, is not eligible for new state support.

Trish Casey, chair of the Faculty Council, says members of the faculty were disappointed by the lack of communication from Mr. Hobgood. "We wanted to be informed about how his work was impacting campus, and sometimes it was difficult to ascertain that," she says.

After his resignation becomes effective, on July 1, Mr. Hobgood will spend a year on a paid research leave and then, he says, would like to return to the University of North Carolina system to teach.

Michael Franco, vice chancellor for advancement, says the system hopes to have an interim chancellor for the school selected by the end of June. The process of selecting a permanent replacement will probably begin in the fall.

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COMINGS AND GOINGS: Anne Ponder will return home to become chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. A Tar Heel who grew up in Asheville, Ms. Ponder has been president of Colby-Sawyer College, in New Hampshire, for the past nine years. At Asheville she will replace James H. Mullen Jr., who is leaving to become president of the College of Our Lady of the Elms, in Massachusetts. ... Steven Salzberg has been named director of the University of Maryland's new Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He is currently senior director of bioinformatics at the Institute for Genomic Research, in Rockville, Md.

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