Former regent: U of A Health Sciences change is just administrative restructure

Administrative costs “have been cut disproportionately to every other part of the campus, and so there’s, I think, both an efficiency component to this and a strategic component,” DuVal told the Arizona Daily Star in an interview about the restructuring.

He was speaking for the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s three public universities. DuVal was a longtime member of the board until his term ended June 13.

“What we value the most is protecting student success, protecting faculty, growing research,” DuVal said. “Tucson has been very vocal about (these) as we go through this sort of redesign of the balance sheet — protect those three things and cut administrative costs first. And the administration has done that.”

DuVal has strong familial connections with the UA’s College of Medicine, as his father, Merlin DuVal, was the founding dean of the college and built it from the ground up. The college opened for its first class of students in 1967 and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2017. It has been under the Health Sciences unit since 2019.

The UA announced in early June that the various functions that have been under Health Sciences will instead be integrated into other parts of the larger university. Health Sciences, a collective unit since 2019, has housed the UA colleges of medicine in Tucson and Phoenix and the colleges of nursing, pharmacy and public health.

All of its colleges and administrative units will now be under Provost Patricia Prelock's office. The research centers under health sciences, on the other hand, will be moved under the Office of Research and Partnerships, led by Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, UA’s senior vice president for research and partnerships.

UA’s health sciences unit previously was led by a senior vice president paid nearly $1 million a year, Michael Dake, who was hired by former UA President Robert C. Robbins. UA President Suresh Garimella, who started at the UA in October 2024, announced in April last year that Dake was dismissed from that position after seven years and that the post was being eliminated.

After Dake’s departure, Jennifer Barton led the unit as interim vice provost for health programs at a $352,443 salary; she will now go back to a faculty position.

Melissa Colchado will be executive director of health operations, reporting to the provost, starting July 13 at $188,673 a year.

While UA officials haven’t said how many jobs were cut due to this reorganization, two sources, who are among those losing their jobs, told the Star they were told 28 employees are being laid off as of Aug. 7. The employees being laid off are in different units in health sciences, including finance, administration, communications, BioCommunications and events, they said.

DuVal said the job losses from this reorganization are "very real," but the university’s responsibility is to make sure taxpayer money is used efficiently.

Prelock and Díaz de la Rubia wrote in the June 9 announcement about the changes: “Health is as central to our mission as it has ever been. This commitment goes far beyond our five health sciences colleges. It lives in the students we train, the discoveries we make, and every community we serve across Arizona.”

In the UA’s general operating budget for FY26, which runs through June 30, Health Sciences and its divisions had a budget of $48.6 million after an 18% cut from the previous year.

“Consistent with the university’s broader efforts to streamline administration and reduce organizational complexity, these changes are expected to save significant dollars that can be directed toward the university's core missions of education, research, clinical care and service,” UA spokesperson Mitch Zak said.

Zak did not say how much money the UA will save with this reorganization.

Here are excerpts of the Star’s interview with DuVal:

What was the origin of the Health Sciences unit reorganization?

A: A couple of things, just to level set. This is internal (UA) management, so it’s not as though a reorganization plan would come to the board for prior approval. On the efficiency side, it allows fewer people to do more administrative things. And saving money is a good thing. It reduces pressure on tuition and it protects the three priorities I indicated — faculty, student success and tuition. So, at a board level, we say search for efficiency and cut from the top first. And the second message is to grow research.

I’ve lived this because my dad was recruited as the founding dean, reported to the provost. He was then recruited back as the first vice president for health sciences, which was the first time they put the five schools together. This is 3.0 (the 3.0 version of health sciences) because what we’re now learning is how integrated and how interdisciplinary both the teaching of medicine and the research around medicine is, and that’s why UCLA has moved to this model, (the University of) Buffalo has moved to this model, Ohio State who has one of the biggest health enterprises in the world has moved to this model. They have discovered that this interdisciplinary dynamic is really accurate, that medicine is about science and biology, health drug discovery is about biology, that technology is so embedded in the teaching of health sciences.

So, the interdisciplinary nature of the teaching of medicine is one part, and the second part is the research part and how interdisciplinary funders want you to be able to sort of draw upon all of those assets. When you think about public health, you can’t run a public health school without drawing on the school of social work, which is over here at the other campus. So, these are all just examples of the same phenomena, which is that campuses which are leaping ahead in research are finding ways to make sure they’ve got as much synergy as they possibly can to draw upon those different expertise’s in order to meet the more technologically embedded solutions that exist in health sciences.

Do you think the UA Health Sciences brand will be affected by this reorganization? Might it cause a trend of students choosing to go to Phoenix, where the UA has had a college of medicine since 2007, and Arizona State University is opening its own medical school in August, rather than Tucson?

A: Obviously, respectfully, but I don’t share the premise. It’s probably not the strongest example, but I’m using it: So, I don’t think the (UA’s) Eller School of Dance loses brand value because it reports into the centralized communications team. It’s still one of the nation’s best dance schools. (UA’s Wyant College of) Optical Sciences has never reported to anybody but the provost and it has got global brand value and is one of the biggest capture of NASA grants. Nobody would make the case that they aren’t being well-served in terms of brand differentiation.

I think it’s a distinction without a difference. The College of Medicine is the brand. The College of Medicine will continue to be elevated, branded, it’ll continue to grow, it’ll grow even more because of Phoenix and (the new branch in) Yuma. The brand value is driven by the people in the institution, whether or not they can do great work, whether or not they can land great research, whether or not a student can get a great medical education. There’s a lot that goes into brand value that has nothing to do with whether or not the reporting lines are to a provost or to a president.

Now again, I want to say that the personnel is real. The people who lose jobs, very real. But being specific about the question about brand value, I can’t think of any example of a university — at the U of A or the other two — where if they’ve got a great product, where the communications department sits is a relevant factor in whether or not the brand accomplishes its successful differentiation.

What happens to the big Health Sciences Innovation Building on Drachman Street? Will that become a building for one of the colleges under Health Sciences?

A: No, it’s all the same. This is really just an administrative (restructure). This is a line on the organization chart which goes differently. The building will remain the same, the names will largely be the same, the deans will remain the same. There seems to be this notion that we’re closing health sciences. We’re not. It’s a reporting structure.

You say the priority is to cut from the top and tighten administrative costs, but the reorganization is also affecting other teams, such BioCommunications, a multimedia organization that provided media services to health sciences and UA overall for the last 40 years, which is losing jobs.

A: Everyone in the communications team at the University of Arizona — we do communications around athletics, we do communications around the Eller School of Dance — we are branding all of our schools constantly. Are there things that are unique about health? Certainly, there are. There are things that are unique about the Eller School of Dance. That’s sort of part of the growth orientation that the folks in communications have got to be able to learn how to brand multiple schools, because that’s the nature of what a university is.

So, I respect the expertise, but I have confidence that really smart communications people, much as they can master the other 14 disciplines on campus, can add a 15th and acquire the knowledge necessary to communicate its brand value.

Is this change only about an administrative or reporting structure reorganization, or are finances part of this as well?

A: For sure, there will be savings.

The taxpayers expect us to be efficient when we can, to save them and their tuition-paying students money. The faculty expects us to cut from the top to protect what they do in the classroom. And the students expect us to try and minimize pressure on tuition. And if we can do those things without loss of effective functionality, we’re going to try and find ways to do that.

I can’t quantify what (the savings) will be, and particularly because to honor the undoubtedly superb people who will be affected by this. We’re going to save as many jobs as we possibly can. I don’t know how all that sorts out, but there will be cost savings, cutting from the top which is what the campus has told us they want.

And with no loss of functionality, because all the same functions will happen, all the same deans will exist, all the same names will exist, all the same faculty will exist, all the same programs will exist. So, it really is just reporting, it’s a little bit of capture of efficiency, and making the bet that the synergy across disciplines will help us accelerate research capture.