Provost Sees Good Diagnosis
By Jim Stafford, The Daily Oklahoman
Jan. 7–Nearly 40 years ago, Joseph Ferretti came to Oklahoma for a job interview only as an excuse to visit a childhood friend living in Tulsa.
Ferretti won the job and has stayed for almost four decades, helping to build the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center into a flourishing campus focused on health care education and research.
It was a decision that he now describes as the best choice he ever made.
“I was invited to come out on an interview, and I declined,” Ferretti recalls of his first encounter with Oklahoma in 1969.
“Then Ed Brandt, who was on the faculty at OU, urged a friend who was on the Johns Hopkins faculty to speak to me about the OU job,” he said. “His laboratory was next to my laboratory, and he came over to me and said ‘Joe, I know you are going to California (for a job interview); why don’t you stop there on the way?’ I thought about it and said ‘OK, I’ll do that because I have a childhood friend who lives in Tulsa and I haven’t seen him for eight or nine years.’
“So, I came here and stopped off in Oklahoma City and met all the people here, and I went and visited with my friend. I liked it.”
Thirty-seven years later, Ferretti remains in Oklahoma, and today serves as senior vice president and provost at OU’s Health Sciences Center where he oversees the university’s seven medical colleges.
“I decided on Oklahoma, and I’ve never looked back,” said the Chicago native who raised two children as Oklahomans. “I didn’t immediately want to come, and it’s the best choice I ever made.”
Ferretti recently discussed his life as an Oklahoman and his role at OU’s Health Sciences Center campus with The Oklahoman. Here are excerpts of that conversation:
Q: As a native of Chicago who went to both high school and college in that city, contrast the Windy City with Oklahoma City.
A: “First of all I love Chicago. Every time I go back to Chicago I love it, but at the same time I’m glad I live in Oklahoma. I like to visit Chicago and do the things they have there and I like to see my family, but I would not want to have to deal with everything they have to deal with in the city of Chicago. My mother lived about 41/2 miles away from the airport, and sometimes it took about 45 minutes to get there. I don’t see the quality of life traveling an hour, hour and half each way to work. That doesn’t appeal to me, the traffic and all the other things.
Q: Cubs or White Sox?
A: I’m a die-hard Cubs fan. It’s what I call an inborn error. I can’t control it. I’m still in wait-til-next-year mode.
Q: And you’ve been in that mode since …?
A: Since I’ve been born. Actually, they were in the World Series in 1944 or 1945. When the Bulls were on their run of six championships, I took my son and son-in-law to one of the finals in Chicago.
Q: What drew you to science as a young person?
A: Ever since I was a young boy, I thought about doing medical research. I didn’t know what kind. In college, I did a little bit of physiology research, and then I took a part-time job doing some microbiology and biochemistry. I actually got my degree in biochemistry, but I worked all the time on infectious agents. I was trained in a pediatrics department.
Q: What’s the most appealing aspect of research?
A: I enjoy research because it’s a challenge. There are answers out there to questions, that you can actually pose the question, make a hypothesis about how to answer it and then do the experiment to get the result. The interesting thing is that you may not be able to get the result you expect, or you may not be able to do it with your first approach. Then it’s you against the problem. That’s the fun thing of solving a problem. Problem-solving is kind of what it’s all about. When you meet a brick wall, you have to have the frame of mind that that brick wall isn’t against you, it’s against the approach that’s been taken. You have to find another approach; you have to be resilient.
Q: In nearly four decades here, how has the OU Health Sciences Center campus changed?
A: Oh, gosh. This is a completely different place than it was 37, 38 years ago when I came here. I remember walking into the dean or the CEO at the time, Dean James Dennis, and he had this whole model of what the Oklahoma health center was going to look at. He said we are planning this just like they do down in Houston. It’s going to be quite a medical center. I kind of looked at it — I was young and thought these were grand ideas — but I didn’t really think any more about it. Well, it’s here. And it’s even bigger than what they originally proposed. It’s been kind of exiting especially in the last 10 years with all the things that have happened here. Obviously, President Boren has made a huge difference. But we have had such an explosion of growth on this campus in the last 10 years in our research funding and our overall growth and our clinical practice. The hospitals are all doing well, and this whole neighborhood is transformed. Everybody is saying, the health science center is one of the jewels of the state and it’s an economic engine. It didn’t used to be that way. So that’s what’s so pleasing to see happen. We have such great people in administration here that have helped that happen.
Q: Companies based on research conducted here seem to be spinning out of OU on a regular basis. Is creation of new businesses important to you?
A: Yes it is; it is very important. It adds to bringing new people to the state; economic growth. It’s about what we should be doing. We want to turn our inventions and our discoveries into things that are usable by the general public. If we can do more of that, it’s going to be all the more better. We are just delighted with the Presbyterian Health Foundation doing the things they have done, building the facilities they have built so that our companies stay here. The CEO of Texas Health Center in Houston came up here one day and took a look at the Research Park, and he was just amazed.
Q: How many new researchers do you hope to add when the Cancer Center opens on your campus in a couple years?
A: Our goal right now is to immediately add 25 new faculty members. We will probably be adding an equal number to that within five years. We hope these 25 positions are going to come on line within two years, and within three years after that there will be another 25. Now consider what they bring with them. Each one of these people will bring one or two research grants we hope and other lab personnel and things like that. We are going to have a sizable increase in the number of people coming on board.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Daily Oklahoman
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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