After graduating from Northwestern as a chemistry major, Robert Alpern went through many schools before finding his home as the dean of the Yale School of Medicine. Alpern, Weinberg ’72, has since taught at University of California at San Francisco and University of Texas at Southwestern, and served as a dean at Southwestern Medical Center from 1998-2004. A notable nephrologist, a physician trained in treating kidneys, Alpern has also been elected to various advisory councils, been on editorial boards of numerous medical journals and served as president of the American Society of Nephrology.
The Daily: How did you decide to go into medicine?
Robert Alpern: In high school, I decided that I really like science and really wanted to help people, and medicine seemed to combine both.
The Daily: Did you make any connections at NU that helped your future career?
RA: Northwestern inspired me to want to become an academician, teacher and a researcher. I had one professor of developmental biology, Sidney Simpson, who really cared about students and teaching and helping students learn. He was clearly more interested in my learning than getting the project done.
The Daily: What are some of the perks of being a dean?
RA: Being the dean of a medical school is different from being a dean at other colleges and universities just because of the size of the medical school. On the one hand, you’re an academic leader and have to be very knowledgeable … We then have 800 doctors, a large group of physicians practicing and taking care of patients so that students studying along with them learn about medicine. With all of that, you are also running an entity with a budget of a billion dollars and basically functioning as the CEO of a large business entity.
The Daily: I read that you were influential in developing a race-neutral admissions policy while you served on the admissions committee at University of Texas at Southwestern. How do you feel about affirmative action in the college admissions process?
RA: I believe strongly in diversity and I believe in affirmative action, strongly, but the courts in Texas at the time outlawed using race in admissions process and so we had to come up with a policy that did not use race or ethnicity but still achieved diversity. We were allowed to ask questions like whether or not someone in college joined an organization that helped African Americans, but we weren’t able to ask whether or not the applicant was African American. It’s good for med schools to churn out doctors that will serve minority populations.
The Daily: Do your loyalties lie anywhere?
RA: My strongest loyalties are with Northwestern and Yale. I think out of all the schools I’ve been to, the one I’m most grateful to is Northwestern, because it transformed me from a high school student to an adult both socially and academically. Northwestern taught me to really enjoy knowledge and to really work hard to be the best that you can be.
