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AUB's dean signs exchange agreement with MUSC by Dick Peterson Public Relations A formal exchange agreement signed Tuesday, April 1, with American University of Beruit (AUB), Lebanon, will open MUSC’s Medical Scientist (M.D.-Ph.D.) Training Program to qualified AUB students who have completed their first two years of medical school training.     Although AUB has had previous success with exchange programs for medical students, medical residents and house staff at such universities as Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Emory and Baylor, the arrangement with MUSC is new among M.D.-Ph.D. programs in the country.    It also will show MUSC students how medicine and science is taught in another part of the world, said Victor Del Bene, M.D., the College of Medicine’s associate dean for student affairs. “We’re always looking for new opportunities for our students.”    Dr. Nadim Cortas signs the formal exchange agreement April 1. Looking on are Drs. Perry Halushka, center, and MUSC President Ray Greenberg. Here to sign the agreement, vice president for medical affairs and dean at AUB’s medical center Nadim Cortas, M.D., said that MUSC has an established, though informal, relationship with graduates of his university, many of whom are on the MUSC faculty.    Among them are Lina Obeid, M.D., Yusuf Hannun, M.D., and Ayad A. Jaffa, Ph.D., Miguel Abboud, M.D., also an AUB graduate, returned recently to Beruit to direct its medical center’s Department of Pediatric Oncology. Recent AUB students who are graduates of MUSC’s Medical Scientist Training Program are the Makhlouf brothers, Tony (2000) and Michel (1999). Their sister, Huda, graduated in 1998 with a Ph.D.    “We will clearly benefit in this agreement,” said College of Graduate Studies dean and MSTP director Perry Halushka, M.D., Ph.D. “AUB is an outstanding medical school. We look forward to their students joining our program.”    Cortas said that the university is carved into a rock on the Ras Beirut peninsula which runs along the Mediterranean Sea shore and overlooks St. George’s Bay towards northern Lebanon with snow-capped mountains to the east. “It has a similar climate to Charleston.”    He credits the university’s faculty for maintaining an excellent program through Lebanon’s wartime years of the 1970s and into the 1990s. “Conditions now are very good.” The university rebuilt itself after the war including its core facilities for scientific research and boasts a high faculty retention, Cortas said.     The university has hosted the Middle East Medical Assembly uninterrupted since 1992. This is a gathering of physicians and physician-scientists from all over the Middle East and also draws participants from the U.S. Cortas hopes that current conditions in the region will allow a successful 2003 assembly scheduled for May 8 through 11. “I am very excited about this agreement. It will benefit both AUB and the Medical University, by promoting opportunities for students to learn in a different environment. At a time of international conflict, it is particularly meaningful that we can work across geographic and culture distances to help make the world a little safer and healthier.” —Ray Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D. President “I think it is a superb opportunity.” —Jerry Reves, M.D.  Dean, College of Medicine   Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.