Courage to change

My plan was always to write about change this week and how I think about it. I did not anticipate the depth of potential change we would be navigating! I am grateful to Dr. Lois Geist, one of our own faculty members from the Pulmonary Division, currently serving as the university’s Interim Vice President for Research. Her team’s responsiveness in the face of the rapidly changing and challenging circumstances around federal policy is appreciated. I recommend setting a browser bookmark on this UI Research page and checking back often, though it does seem like we will not hear much more until the AAMC’s court filing gets a hearing a week from today. Please continue to send me or your division leaders your questions and concerns around research issues. I need to also remind all that when we speak publicly that we respect the dividing line between our responsibilities as state employees and stewards of public funds and our rights as private citizens. If you have questions about what activities fall on which side of this line, please ask me or other department leadership or consult these university resources. We should not get in our own way now or any other time.

Change, especially when we are not in full control of its implementation, is an epicenter for anxiety. By definition change moves us from a familiar position and places us into an unfamiliar one. We are uncertain about a move’s consequences, unable to anticipate every eventuality. Change can force us to adapt more rapidly than we would prefer. It is understandable then if we get nervous or stressed out in times of change. But there is often a competing impulse that can help to remember. We often need and even crave change. We can feel dissatisfied with our current circumstances and believe that if we could just shift the needle in this or that direction then things might be easier, more efficient, or our impact more durable and effective. In other words, part of us knows change is good. It is how we grow, how we improve, how we adapt to the world around us. If we are not changing, we are being left behind.

In fact, what I heard from many of you in my first months in this role is that there are several ways our department operates that you want to change. Some are small shifts in priorities, giving attention and support to overlooked and underappreciated areas; other changes requested are more systemic and will take more time, such as how our faculty compensation model functions. As I announced at my first quarterly town hall, meetings of the comp model working group have begun in earnest as we plot out its revision with care. These kinds of changes, large and small, will be hard, they will make us doubt ourselves or whether the effort will be worth it, but we must seize opportunity when it is presented. To avoid change for fear of making the wrong decision is also a decision, but one where we stagnate.

Photo for reflection
I took this guy’s photo more than 7 years ago, but I still think about him and his community. We all know the qualities we associate with the lion, bold and courageous, and in the context of change, it is easy to be brave and be a change-leader when you are the biggest one on the block. But I think there are other lessons to be found here. The marks that time and experience have left on this handsome cat don’t read as injury to me, they read as wisdom, patience, perseverance. He acts when the situation tells him it is time to move, and he does it with purpose. And although male lions typically hunt alone and females in community, both male and female lions are the rare predator that will hunt during storms. They don’t let uncertainties stop them from going after a goal. They stay focused on using their strengths and on what they can achieve. Some of you may know that “Singh” means lion. But I can’t do this alone. Let’s be lions, team. We need change—help us imagine a better path forward for all.

Upi’s “OH WOW” moment
I was grateful last week to attend the 2025 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Lecture sponsored by University of Iowa Health Care as part of its annual Human Rights Week celebration. This year’s guest was Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author of two books. Her lecture focused primarily on her more recent book, and she delivered many eye-opening insights. But it was near the end of the Q&A that she spoke about the response of people to her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, about the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North. More than a few people told her about how a family member who was part of that migration had felt seen by her book, like someone was telling their story for the first time, even though they did not feel like what they did was all that special or noteworthy. There are many conclusions to be drawn from that, especially around what it means to make changes in pursuit of hope, but I’ll just leave it at this: Even if you do not think of yourself as special or part of something bigger, you are. Everything we do leaves a mark on the world around us, so we should always ask ourselves what kind of mark we want to leave.