New department of medicine leader charts strong course for faculty       

"The best way to build allegiances is to first grow your own," said Richter, who, in his first 100 days in office, met with every single faculty member in the department of medicine — approximately 120 people, or one-third of the school's faculty.

"Temple is lucky to have a stable core of loyal doctors who love teaching and love Temple. They are very happy here," Richter said.

It's also vital to employ a strong force at the early- and mid-career level. To this end, Richter is working on transforming more of the junior faculty into loyal careerists with a strong allegiance to Temple.                  

"We want to both stabilize and develop our faculty so that we don't lose them to our competitors," he explained. "It's important for them to practice their three missions equally: research, education and patient care. Many times in the past, often out of necessity, the emphasis was on the patient care mission."

To foster more balance of the three-part academic mission, Richter has implemented a junior faculty award program, similar to those he developed at the Cleveland Clinic and the American College of Gastroenterology. Each year, two junior faculty members (assistant professors) will receive, on a competitive basis, a three-year, $225,000 grant to support their research. Plus, 50 percent of their time will be protected so that they can conduct this research.

Such an award provides a bridge from the postgraduate training time to the time when physician/scientists become ready to pursue their own NIH funding.