Brater to retire as dean of IU medical school

Dr. Craig Brater will retire in June next year as dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine, he announced Wednesday, and the school has formed a committee to find his replacement.

Brater, 66, has worked at the Indianapolis-based school for 26 years, including the past 12 as dean. The school is the second largest medical school in the nation and the only one in Indiana.

Brater oversees a massive operation that includes a main campus in Indianapolis and eight satellite campuses throughout the state.

The medical school had a budget of nearly $426 million in the last school year, up by 30 percent over the past five years. It employs 1,900 professors who oversee a total student body of 1,880 and also serve as doctors at five hospitals in Indianapolis, including Wishard Memorial Hospital, the Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center, as well as IU Health’s University Hospital and Riley Hospital for Children.

“Craig Brater has done a superb job leading the IU School of Medicine for the past 12 years and working in close partnership with IU Health and our other clinical partners," said IU President Michael McRobbie in a prepared statement announcing the launch of a national search for Brater’s replacement. "He has effectively and skillfully positioned the school as a research and clinical leader.”

IU has formed a 20-member search committee, which will be led by John Williams, dean of the IU School of Dentistry. Other members of the committee include Dan Evans, CEO of the IU Health hospital system; Dr. Lisa Harris, CEO of Wishard Health Services; and Marion Broome, dean of the IU School of Nursing.

That committee will identify and screen prospective candidates, then recommend a group of finalists to McRobbie and to Charles Bantz, the chancellor of the IUPUI campus, where the medical school is based.

The search committee will be helped by an outside advisory committee, which will be chaired by Chuck Schalliol, a life sciences attorney at Faegre Baker & Daniels LLP, who is a former manager at Eli Lilly and Co. and the former CEO of BioCrossroads, an Indianapolis-based life sciences development group.

Brater is a native of Oak Ridge, Tenn. He attended undergraduate and medical school at Duke University. Before IU, he was part of the faculty at the University of California at San Francisco and worked for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Brater and his wife Stephanie have one grown daughter who lives in Florida.