Bradford C. Berk was formally invested as UR’s Senior Vice President for Health Sciences and CEO of the Medical Center and Strong Health on Tuesday. The ceremony was lead by UR President Joel Seligman.
“As he nears his 100th day as Chief Executive Officer of the University of Rochester Medical Center, Brad has already demonstrated that he is the right person to lead URMC to a new level of clinical and research achievement,” Seligman said. “He has an inspiring balance of scientific prowess, leadership talent and care for the health of patients and the more than 13,000 individuals who work at URMC. He is and will be a great leader.”
Berk has been working in the position since Aug. 1. He was chosen following a national search headed by Seligman, a main search commitee and four advisory commitees.
Since assuming the position, Berk has led a comprehensive strategic planning process to guide URMC through the next five to 10 years.
Berk is optimistic about the future of URMC and his position.
“We can – and will – achieve great things together,” Berk said. “I pledge to you my best efforts to make this vision a reality. And I ask for your best efforts in return.”Online registration has few technical failuresSophomores registering for classes experienced a failure of the online registration system on Wednesday morning.
“We had a small outage this morning between 8:30 and 9:05 a.m.,” Assistant Dean of Institutional Research and University Registrar Nancy Speck said. “But we had over 862 sophomores currently registered by 2 p.m. The interruption was a 30 minute system failure but didn’t effect anyone too negatively.”
The failure was caused by the high volume of students trying to register for classes at the same time.
“I was trying to register early because I didn’t want to get closed out of the classes I wanted,” sophomore Matt Stack said.
However, according to Speck, the morning rush to register may be unnecessary for upperclassmen.
“It is very rare that upperclassmen are locked out of courses,” Speck said. “There are some closed courses, but they would have been closed by the time seniors finished registering. Some classes always close up before sophomores even get a chance to register. No one is always going to get every class they want.”
According to Speck, in order to protect against a system failure during the registration period for the large freshman class, the class has been broken down into thirds. This way no more than 370 freshman will be registering at the same time.
Despite the short technical difficulties experienced by sophomores, juniors and seniors registered without problems.
Students are happy with the online registration system and the convenience it provides. However, there is always room for improvement.
“Although I like the benefits that online registration has to offer, the Registrar’s office should invest more money in the system so that during peak times it doesn’t get overloaded – problems like these happen every year,” junior Alexander Friedman said.
Improvements are always being made, though. The Registrar’s office debriefs after each registration period in order to recognize problems and make improvements.
“Over the next one to two years, we will look to enhance the system,” Speck said.Jarrett is a member of the class of 2009.
