Medical school dean Dr. Sandy Williams has offered the chair of the surgery department to Dr. Danny Jacobs, who holds the same position at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.
Jacobs is in Durham this week visiting Duke, and is expected to decide whether to accept Williams' offer today or Friday.
One of four candidates selected by a search committee, Jacobs beat out two other external candidates and Dr. Ted Pappas, professor of surgery at Duke.
Pappas, who is also chief of gastrointestinal surgery, chief of surgery at the Veterans Administration Hospital and vice chairman for education, was a favorite among members of the department.
"There was a lot of disappointment when I didn't pick [Pappas], and I shared that disappointment. He's a great guy," said Williams, who had the final say on the selection.
The search committee offered the list of four candidates along with their strengths and weaknesses, but withheld rankings upon Williams' request.
"I had access to information the search committee did not have due to my own diligent efforts," said Williams of his decision-making process.
Dr. Carl Ravin, professor and chair of radiology and chair of the search committee, said the committee considered 55 applications and interviewed 17 candidates.
He confirmed that Jacobs and Pappas were among the four final candidates and said disappointment among members of the department is typical when an internal candidate is a finalist but is not selected.
"Dr. Pappas was well-known by the department and well-liked by the department," Ravin said. "We all think highly of him."
Pappas could not be reached for comment.
Williams said that he was looking for someone with clearly demonstrated excellence and someone who could work in a complex environment that would include not only Medical Center departments, but also the Cancer Center, the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy and the Duke Clinical Research Institute.
"It used to be that chairs controlled everything, but the world's too complex for that now," Williams said. "Problems cannot be solved within a single department or even within a single school."
Before arriving at Creighton in 2000, Jacobs held academic appointments in surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard, his medical degree from the Washington University in St. Louis and his master's of public health from Harvard.
He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Parental and Enteral Nutrition and serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. In 2001, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Kevin Lees contributed to this story.
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