Pusey Seeks Successor To Med School's Berry

President Pusey has begun a year-long, nationwide search for a new Dean of the Faculty of Medicine to replace George P. Berry, who will retire in June 1965 at the age of 66.

Pusey said Wednesday that the search for a successor to Dean Berry will be "the first item on my agenda until February or March," when the final decision is expected to be made.

Great care in the selection will be taken, Pusey said, because the post of Dean of the Faculty of Medicine "is one of the most difficult and demanding positions in the University administration" and because "the situation in the Medical School is related to the whole complex of medicine in Boston."

Pusey indicated that the appointment of a new Dean would be the occasion for a re-examination of the policies and direction of the Medical School. He said hat such an assessment is always undertaken whenever a new Dean of any Faculty is named.

A First Step

As a first step, Pusey has asked hundreds of the leading medical educators in the country to write and tell him "in what direction they think medical care is going and what effects they think this will have on medical education."

The Medical School's Committee of Professors, Pusey said, has already begun preliminary discussions related to choosing a new Dean. The committee, of which Pusey is chairman, consists of the 157 full and associate professors in the Faculty of Medicine, plus Dean Berry and Roy O. Greep, Dean of the School of Dental Medicine.

Under Dean Berry, the School of Medicine has expanded its facilities with money raised by the Program for Harvard Medicine, an intensive fund drive similar to the Program for Harvard College. Berry is also a professor of Bacteriology.