On Wednesday, February 21st, the AHC History Project hosted a small round table discussion on the history of the AHC. The seven participants included Frank Cerra, SrVPHS; Neal Gault, former Dean Medical School; Harry Hogenkamp, former head of Dept. of Biochemistry; John Kersey, Director Cancer Center; John Kralewski, former Director Institute of Health Services Research, Public Health; Marilyn Sime, former Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies, School of Nursing; and Charlene Thoemke, Executive Assistant, SrVPHS, and agreed to answer a few open ended questions and express some of their own in a conversational format. The invited audience included a few members of the advisory committee, AHC Office of Communications staff, and University Archives staff. It was hoped that a small audience would not inhibit the overall discussion.

For nearly three hours, the participants discussed their own backgrounds at the AHC, their understandings of major events and milestones, education and research issues, the influence of managed care on the AHC’s mission, and current and future funding concerns.

The discussion was professionally videotaped and all participants agreed to the recording being deposited in University Archives for future research use.

The ultimate goal of the round table was to better guide the history project by bringing in key individuals to help identify topics and events. Although this was an experiment, its success seems evident and will likely support a series of future round table discussions.