J. Larry Jameson, vice president for medical affairs and Feinberg School of Medicine dean, has been named the inaugural Lewis Landsberg Dean of the Feinberg School.

“He really has valued the advice he received from Dr. Landsberg,” said Rebecca Cooke, Feinberg senior associate dean for administration. Jameson said the title carries no additional responsibilities, but the addition of Landsberg’s name to the title is more of an honorific.

Jameson described Landsberg as his mentor and predecessor.

“He exemplifies so many of the leadership and professional attributes any physician would admire,” he said. “It’s first recognition of Dr. Landsberg and (second) an honor for me. The creation of this chair was a very robust statement by the medical school to his leadership.”

Jameson said he plans to train the next generation of physicians to be prepared for the health care of the future with team-based care maneuvers instead of the more traditional apprentice model, where students work with physicians.

“Our goal is to be able to have a high impact on the Chicago community and provide a regional resource for challenging medical problems within the Northwestern system,” Jameson said.

Jameson said he will continue to work with Emeritus Professor Landsberg, who is developing a center for obesity research. After recommendations from other medical schools about who to succeed Dean Lewis Landsberg, University Provost Lawrence Dumas and University President Henry Bienen received “unanimous and larrenthusiastic feedback” describing Jameson as the natural successor, according to a letter written by Dumas.

President of Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation James L. Schroeder said Jameson was a good choice for the position.”Under (Jameson’s) leadership, the school has been extraordinary on every metric, whether it’s the number of faculty and their distinctions or the amount of research for the success of the clinical enterprise,” Schroeder said. In Jameson’s seven years as chairman of medicine, he increased the department of medicine’s ranking on the National Institute of Health from 43rd to 21st, Cooke said.

“This is really unheard of for intuitions to go up this much in such a short period of time, mostly through encouraging research activity of people already here,” Cooke said. “He led by example and encouraged people to think about where their work was being published in the best possible journals in terms of their impact and how many people read them.”

Cooke said Jameson believes in listening to the opinions of everyone around him before he makes a decision.

“Some people would miss out on opportunity to get different point of view, but he’s always seeking a varied input a things,” she said.

Reach Kristin Ellertson at [email protected].