October 13, 2005
Assistant dean for planning named
Dr. Richard Meisinger Jr., who comes to the UW from the University of California at Davis, has been named assistant dean for planning and new initiatives in the School of Medicine. He will work with Dr. John Slattery, vice dean for research and graduate education, who began work at the UW on Oct. 1.
Meisinger had been at UC Davis since 1986, with stints in the School of Medicine there and working for the campus as a whole. Most recently, he was director of a new unit he developed, Institutional Research Support, in the UC Davis Office of Research. The unit was formed to support preparation of large and complex interdisciplinary research proposals, and also to oversee shared research facilities.
Before that, he was director from 2000 to 2004 of Academic Resource Planning for the UC Davis School of Medicine. Meisinger led planning for relocating the first two years of medical school instruction from Davis to Sacramento, along with developing a new building there. Among other projects, he also created a 10-year plan to develop approximately 360,000 sq. ft. of new research space.
Slattery said the UW School of Medicine is getting into a lot of new things, and that Meisinger will work on long-term plans for the research hub at South Lake Union, along with other research space-related projects. He will also oversee clinical research billing and budgeting, and will develop support structures for major interdisciplinary grant proposals. His portfolio will include research partnerships with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
Meisinger described himself as “a long-term thinker,” who sees the bigger picture and develops plans and systems for “three to five to 10 years out.” Along with planning for the future at South Lake Union, he will be looking at multidisciplinary research programs in general, and support facilities for research.
He moved to UC Davis in 1986 as associate vice chancellor for planning and budget, and then became associate provost in 1998. He was an administrator at the University of Maryland, College Park, from 1977 to 1986, and at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia from 1975 to 1977.
Meisinger earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from Cornell and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He was in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1969 to 1971, serving in both Thailand and at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 in higher education administration from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was also a postgraduate researcher. In addition he has done work at Harvard’s Institute of Educational Management.
Outside his academic work, Meisinger is a photographer whose work is included in several museum collections.
– Claire Dietz
