D E A N ’ S LET T ER
TAKING THE GOOD WITH THE BAD I am reminded of the oft-quoted opening of Charles Dickens’
balance to my own COVID-19 fatigue, anxiety, and depression.
A Tale of Two Cities (“It was the best of times, it was the worst
I had the opportunity recently to catalogue many of those
of times…”) as I think about the status of the UND School
accomplishments for two uses: first, as data that I used in
of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS) in the midst of the
my “State of the School” address to the UND SMHS Faculty
pandemic. On one hand, the achievements of the School, thanks
Assembly this past January; and second, in my presentation to
to the outstanding efforts of our students, faculty members,
the North Dakota Legislative Assembly as part of our budget
and staff, truly are amazing, especially in the face of SARS-
request for the upcoming biennium. Here are a number of
CoV-2 (COVID-19). On the other hand, there is palpable fatigue
bullet points that highlight some of the amazing achievements
and anxiety related to the pandemic and the ongoing mixed
of our students, faculty, and staff (note that percentile rank
messages we hear almost continuously (“hurrah, we have
refers to a comparison of our data with comparable data from
multiple vaccines; ugh, there are new variants of the virus that
other medical schools in the U.S.):
are more contagious and perhaps more resistant to vaccines”). For me personally, the wonderful work being done by our School community to educate, discover, and serve is a great 4
North Dakota Medicine Spring 2021
• Students from North Dakota who matriculated at any U.S. medical school in 2019 who enrolled at the UND SMHS – 91%
