[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 26 (Thursday, March 1, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1743-S1744]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING DR. JOHN C. CHAPMAN

 Mr. FRIST. Mr President, I rise today to recognize the 
remarkable accomplishments of Dr. John E. Chapman, who is today 
retiring as Dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. 
Chapman is not only one of the longest-serving deans in medical school 
history, but a man who has made a major contribution to medical 
education in America and around the world.
  I had the great honor of serving with Dean Chapman from 1986 to 1994 
when I was a member of the Vanderbilt Medical School faculty. Even 
then, his reputation around campus was legendary--for his compassion 
for young people, for his scholarship of medicine and history, and for 
his concern for the future of medical school education--a concern 
overwhelmingly apparent from even the most cursory glance around his 
office.

[[Page S1744]]

  In addition to a bust of Winston Churchill, whom he met in 1946 when 
a national debate competition coincided with the Prime Minister's 
famous ``Iron Curtain'' speech, it housed a virtual museum of medical 
history. But perhaps the greatest evidence of his dedication to 
advancing the state of American medical education was a small album 
filled with the photographs of multi-generations of family members--
grandfathers, sons and grandsons whose degrees were all conferred by 
Dr. Chapman.
  In all, 3,317 men and women have received a medical degree from the 
man lovingly known as ``the patron saint of medical students.'' And Dr. 
Chapman and his wife, Judy, made time for each of them, hosting parties 
for them at their home, and attending all their many functions to 
cheerlead their cause. Indeed, I'm convinced, Mr. President, that 
Vanderbilt's continuous Number One medical school rating based on 
student satisfaction would not have been achieved without Dr. Chapman.
  But Dr. Chapman's influence was not confined to Tennessee. In 
addition to his leadership as the only three-term member of the 
American Medical Association's Council on Medical Education, he chaired 
the U.S. Medical Licensure Examination Committee--that oversees the 
examination of all physicians seeking to practice in the United States, 
and was one of only a small handful of physicians to sit on the 
governing councils of both the AMA and the Association of American 
Medical Colleges. In 1994, he lent his expertise to the Senate in 
testimony before this body on the state of medical school funding in 
America.
  Yet, not content to confine his efforts to one country, he reached 
out even farther, spearheading a medical student exchange program 
between Vanderbilt and the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Sweden. 
Other U.S. medical schools, following his lead, soon joined this 
remarkable program, causing the Karolinska Institute to hail his 
efforts as a ``conspicuous contribution to medical education 
worldwide.''
  John Chapman has come a long way from the boy from the Missouri 
Ozarks, who became the man who shook the hand of Winston Churchill in 
1946, to the physician who, in conjunction with Nobel Prize ceremonies 
in Stockholm, Sweden, received an honorary M.D. from the Karolinska 
Institute, to the medical historian and scholar who represented the AMA 
in hearings before the Senate. But despite his many awards and 
accolades and international recognition, his most remarkable 
accomplishment remains his commitment to students. While the average 
tenure for a medical school dean is five years, Dr. Chapman served his 
students five times as long.
  Yet while he leaves the office of Dean tomorrow after 25 years, he 
will not leave Vanderbilt, but continue his commitment to students as 
Associate Vice Chancellor of Alumni Affairs.
  For more than one quarter of a century, Dr. John Chapman has been a 
bulwark of strength in the often turbulent sea of medicine and medical 
education. Not only has medical education been his life's work, but 
he's done it for so long and at such a high level that the magnitude of 
his contributions to the entire field of medicine is both enormous and 
historic. They are accomplishments that make John Chapman not just a 
great physician, scholar, and teacher but a great American.
  On behalf of all the people of Tennessee and physicians everywhere, I 
congratulate him and wish him well.

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