Eight finalists for the position of UF's senior vice president for health affairs were announced Tuesday.
They will be interviewed in Gainesville on March 18 and 19, and UF hopes to have a new vice president no later than fall semester, said Win Phillips, UF's vice president of research and chair of the search committee charged with finding a replacement for Doug Barrett. He announced in March he was stepping down and but postponed his departure in June.
The new vice president will have new responsibilities, Phillips said. Instead of simply overseeing UF's Health Science Center, which includes six colleges - dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health and health professions and veterinary medicine - the vice president will be chair of the Shands HealthCare board of directors.
"It's a big job," Phillips said. "One of the most important in the U.S."
The Health Science Center generates over half of all of UF's research awards and has over 6,000 students enrolled in its colleges.
Shands HealthCare includes eight hospitals which logged more than 1 million outpatient visits in the 2008 fiscal year, according to its Web site.
