Over eight years as dean of the University of Missouri-Columbia's College of Medicine, William Crist more than doubled both the size of his school's faculty and its budget. He will be charged with accomplishing a similar task--plus many others--when he assumes the new position of vice president for health affairs at the University of Arizona on Oct. 31.

Dr. Crist, whose hiring was approved by the Arizona Board of Regents at its Aug. 14 meeting, will oversee UA's medical, nursing, pharmacy, and public-health colleges, as well as the Arizona Cancer Center. He will also manage the university's relationships with University Medical Center and University Physicians Healthcare, the physicians group representing 300 UA College of Medicine faculty.

"Bill Crist's excellent track record as a medical school dean and successful fundraiser, as well as his noted work as a physician-scientist, provide the exact background we were seeking for this important new position," said UA President Robert Shelton. "Arizona must address a severe shortage of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals. Under Dr. Crist's leadership we will redouble our efforts to help address this crisis."

Most prominent among several immediate challenges for Dr. Crist is hiring deans for the Tucson and Phoenix campuses of the College of Medicine, and for the College of Nursing. He will also play a key role in the build-out of the downtown Phoenix Biomedical Campus, where the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University is aiming to grow from its current entering class of 48 students to 150 within five years, and where a vision of building a new teaching hospital has faltered. And Dr. Crist will be called on to address the findings of a report on medical-faculty discontent that was released in April by the Committee of Eleven, a UA panel that investigates faculty complaints.

"The size of the job is enormous in comparison to what I'm doing now," Dr. Crist said in the Columbia Missourian. "It's a daunting task I face, but I like challenges, and that's why I'm making this move."

Less than two months ago, Dr. Crist's new position didn't exist. On July 1, UA President Robert Shelton announced a restructuring of the health-sciences units at UA. He and Executive Vice President and Provost Meredith Hay then assembled a short-list of candidates for the new position, and by July 31, Dr. Crist was visiting with faculty and staff in Tucson as the sole finalist. Dr. Hay had previously worked with Dr. Crist at the University of Missouri.

One reason Dr. Crist stood out as a candidate for the vice presidency was his reputation a powerful fundraiser. While dean of the MU College of Medicine, he raised more than $100 million for the MU capital campaign and oversaw a 70 percent growth in the medical school's budget, to $100 million a year. The faculty grew more than 60 percent, to around 650.

Still, he told the Columbia Tribune, he wanted to effect more change than just growth, and was finding it difficult to do so. And he found it trying to repeatedly seek for additional funding from the Missouri Legislature, which he said provides the MU College of Medicine around $13 million per year, compared to the $65 million that the UA College of Medicine receives from the Arizona legislature.

"I wasn't interested in a maintenance job," Dr. Crist said in the Tribune. "I wanted to be transformational in my presence here, and I sense that [the position at UA] is a transformational job. So, I gradually got infected with the idea that I can make an enormous contribution there."

Immediately upon arrival at UA, Dr. Crist will have the chance to make his mark with the hiring of new deans for the medical school's two campuses. Edward Shortliffe, who had led the Phoenix campus, stepped down in the spring; Keith Joiner, who had held presided over the entire medical school as dean of the Tucson campus, returned to the medical school faculty when Dr. Shelton's announced the health-sciences restructuring.

Dr. Crist said that he is especially looking forward to working on the growth of the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, but that he is unsure whether the campus actually needs a new teaching hospital, which was once thought to be an essential component.

"The sky is the limit in Phoenix, and the sky is the limit in Tucson," he said in the Arizona Republic. "The amount of resources that are in Phoenix are enormous.

"There's a wonderful opportunity to develop a new health-science center, and that includes new efforts in patient care, teaching and research," he said in the Arizona Daily Star.

"How many hospitals you build should be determined by what you need; that is determined by the patient population," he added in the Republic. Upon his initial visits with hospital administrators in the Phoenix area, he said, "I saw no obvious need, at my first pass level, for more teaching facilities." He noted that Harvard University's medical school does not have its own hospital, but relies on relationships with several Boston-area hospitals.

Although Dr. Crist has deep ties to MU--he graduated from medical school there in 1969--he has longtime familiarity with Arizona. He lived in Tucson for six years of his childhood, while his father was stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

Before becoming an administrator, Dr. Crist had made his mark as a pediatric oncologist, authoring or co-authoring 190 scientific papers since 1980.

In his new role, Dr. Crist, 65, will receive a $650,000 annual salary, almost twice what he earned as MU's medical-school dean. He will make more than any other Arizona university employee except the head coaches of ASU and UA's men's basketball and football teams.

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For more information:

"Despite rocky start, medical school presses on," Arizona Republic, 08/27/2008

"Med school dean explains his departure," Columbia Tribune, 08/15/2008

"Crist to be VP of health affairs at Arizona," Columbia Missourian, 08/14/2008

UA news release, 08/14/2008

"Top health post at UA could go to Mo. finalist," Arizona Daily Star, 08/05/2008

"University VP candidate: Fundraising is key," Arizona Republic, 08/01/2008