Wildenthal put UT med school in top tier

08:32 AM CDT on Sunday, May 6, 2007

A small sparrow lay on his back, his legs pushed upward at the sky. A passing farmer, scratching his head, asked the sparrow what he thought he was doing. The bird explained that he had heard the sky was falling. The farmer laughed and said, "Even if that were true, your spindly legs couldn't hold up the sky."

To which the bird replied: "One does what one can."

This is the story of how one man - with rather thin legs, we might add - did what he could in the face of adversity and personal risk to enhance Dallas' standing as one of the great U.S. cities.

In 1986, Dr. Kern Wildenthal became UT Southwestern Medical Center's second president - its resident physician, so to speak. But the school was not at all well.

UT Southwestern, led by Dr. Kern Wildenthal, has built 2 million square feet across the street from the main medical center and attracted grants and Nobel laureates.

The Texas economy had just collapsed, and school donations and state funding cycled down along with it. The new president faced immediate budget cuts of 10 percent.

Worse still, UT Southwestern was not the nationally ranked top-tier medical school that Dr. Wildenthal wanted. To transform itself from a respectable but unremarkable regional medical research school, it needed national grants and acclaimed academicians.

But there was no more room at the inn. The medical center had built out as far and as wide as its footprint would allow. Moreover, there was no adjacent land available for expansion or funds to build costly medical buildings.

Weak pulse

Expansion was feared, not embraced, and Dr. Wildenthal's young presidency was on the line.

Undaunted, Dr. Wildenthal and his acquisition team (Vin Prothro, Bill Neaves and Phillip Montgomery III) spied a mixture of improved and unimproved property across Harry Hines from the medical center that was owned by a charitable foundation. (Remember the old Frito-Lay and Braniff buildings? That's the general spot.)

By the mid-1980s, this once-thriving portion of Harry Hines had become largely ignored except by the homeless, drug dealers and prostitutes. The buildings were only half-occupied. Even so, the charitable foundation politely declined a proposal to donate its land to UT Southwestern because biomedical research was not part of its philanthropic mission.

Undeterred, the Wildenthal team regrouped. Their pulse may have been weak, but they weren't dead. The medical center was out of cash, so it couldn't make a conventional offer for the property. Instead, they asked the foundation's asset managers to donate one-third of the land to the medical school and sell another third at a steep discount to be paid 10 years down the road.

In exchange, the medical center promised to clean up the neighborhood and conduct all future research and development on the acquired land. The value of the foundation's remaining third tract would improve considerably as it attracted new tenants catering to the medical community - so much so that the new rents would more than offset the foundation's donation and discount.

Business approach

The business approach worked - and it allowed the foundation to do what its mission statement could not. UT Southwestern has since built 2 million square feet across the street and attracted grants and Nobel laureates galore.

With an M.D. and a Ph.D., Dr. Wildenthal is a unique combination of healer and businessman. He's drawn on both disciplines to turn UT Southwestern into a top 10 medical school.

Dr. Wildenthal has leadership traits that we greatly admire: a clear vision to achieve success, passionate commitment and a healthy dose of calculated risk-taking. He began his tenure in the face of deep budget cuts. For many, that would have signaled that the school could not afford to expand.

But Dr. Wildenthal saw the real estate collapse as an opportunity to expand on otherwise undesirable land. American philosopher William James said it best: "Genius ... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."

Calculated risk

Dr. Wildenthal found success by expanding when everybody else was retrenching and fretting. He had confidence that his researchers could attract major grants that would fill up new buildings and that top-drawer academicians would follow.

Dr. Wildenthal took a calculated risk, which has allowed him to remain president of a top-tier institution for 21 years. Oddly, people who don't take calculated risks often take the biggest risk of all.

Pauline Graivier is president of Dallas-based Verbal Communications Inc. Rob Hoffman is a partner with Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP.