Brown looking inside for new medical school dean

The new dean of the medical school at Brown University will be home-grown, according to the Brown Daily Herald.

Eli Adashi, the current dean of the Warren Alpert Medical School, surprised the university in December when he said he would step down to make way for new leadership. In office since January 2005, he will stay on until June.

Brown President Ruth Simmons said a nine-member advisory group affiliated with the division of biology and medicine would consider candidates only from within that division, the campus newspaper said. The selection committee and the pool of candidates is much smaller than the one that chose Adashi after a national search, the story says.

"I am confident that this will allow us to have a rapid and smooth transition in the leadership of the division," Simmons wrote in a Dec. 21 e-mail to Brown faculty members obtained by the paper.

During Adashi's tenure the school received a $100 million gift from the Warren Alpert Foundation and changed its name to the Alpert Medical School.