In January, Nova Southeastern University (NSU) appointed Johannes W. Vieweg, M.D., FACS, as founding dean of NSU’s College of Allopathic Medicine. The new college hopes to welcome its first class of medical students by fall of 2018, subject to achieving accreditation. NSU will be the only university in the Southeastern United States and the first in Florida to house both an osteopathic medical school and an allopathic medical school.
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“Building a medical school is a bold move and something really special so I was honored that [NSU] President Dr. George Hanbury asked me to launch it,” says Dr. Vieweg. “He’s a true visionary and with my past experience and background, I know I can help tremendously. Building a medical school from the ground up and shaping it in a way that I feel a medical school should be shaped is something that is extremely attractive and challenging at the same time.”Dr. Vieweg joins NSU from the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville, where he served as the Wayne and Marti Huizenga Endowed Research Scholar’s Chair, director of the UF Prostate Disease Center and chairman of the Florida Prostate Cancer Advisory Council. In 2006, Dr. Vieweg joined UF as the inaugural chairman of the Department of Urology. At the time, there were only two faculty members. In 2014, U.S. News & World Report ranked the urology department 18th in the nation—the state’s highest ranking in urology. Dr. Vieweg credited the strong faculty with the department’s success. He hopes to replicate that success with NSU’s new medical school.
“We will work with our health partner, Hospital Corporation of America, to bring outstanding faculty down to South Florida,” says Dr. Vieweg. “With this association, we have the ability to attract outstanding faculty into our system and this quality will reflect in both education and research.”
Located in Fort Lauderdale, NSU is world renowned for being a dynamic research institution. Dr. Vieweg envisions research to be a strong component of the College of Allopathic Medicine as well.
“One of the differentiating factors that will set our school apart is academic research,” says Dr. Vieweg, who is a specialist in academic research. “Involvement in research exposes you to medical problems that you otherwise will never learn. Through our new curriculum, students will be involved in independent research programs where they get to make medical observations in the clinic and conduct their own investigations while being mentored by faculty. It will be quite fascinating for medical students to be involved in that type of research because it gives them a different thinking and helps to train them to be our future leaders of medicine.”
Another distinguishing factor of the new school is that the pre-clinical component of education, which examines the theory of medicine, will be condensed into one year. Typically, medical schools spend up to two years conveying the theory of medicine. Dr. Vieweg thinks this is too long.
“Students want access to clinical practice and clinical exposure early on and we are seeking to develop that into our new curriculum,” he says. “This is complimentary to NSU’s osteopathic medical school which has a strong community-based mission that we seek to augment through our research and clinical training.
The new medical school coincides with NSU’s additional growth plans of opening a 215,000-square-foot Center for Collaborative Research (CCR) this spring as well as the future relocation of Plantation General Hospital to NSU’s main campus in Davie, Fla., by Hospital Corporation of America East Florida. The hospital will serve the surrounding community and eventually be a teaching and research facility integrated with NSU’s research centers and clinical trials.
“By partnering with Hospital Corporation of America, NSU and the community, we can create a healthy environment and a healthy economy in South Florida,” says Dr. Vieweg. “Aside from clinical education, our key responsibility is to educate Floridians more on how to live healthier, how to live longer and how to live better. We’re building something really special in South Florida and trying to help make it a healthier place for everyone.”
Dr. Vieweg is board certified by the American Board of Urology and recently completed a five-year term as chair of the American Urological Association’s Research Council. He received his medical degree from the Technical University of Munich, Germany in 1978. After relocating to the United States, he spent three years as a post-doctoral research fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Duke University in Durham, N.C. In 1999, he completed the Duke residency-training program in urology and enjoyed a highly productive nine-year tenure as vice chair for research in the Duke Department of Urology.
Much of Dr. Vieweg’s career-long scientific activity has focused on the investigation and clinical testing of genetically engineered tumor vaccines, the discovery of universal tumor antigens and the modulation of immunosuppressive T cells and myeloid cells. He also made significant contributions to the biomedical sciences by discovering novel pathway-targeted interventions and developing prediction models for therapeutic response.
“I’ve always believed that it’s very important for an academic medical professional to really understanding new scientific insights that transform and build the future of medicine,” he says. “Medicine is evolving almost on a daily basis. Being on the forefront of new discoveries and new treatments that benefit patients is very important.”
Dr. Vieweg’s more recent research interests are aligned with the field of public health, prevention medicine, implementation science and comparative effectiveness research, applied in academic and community-based settings. His scientific work has received uninterrupted funding by the National Institutes of Health since 1998 and is well documented in more than 150 publications, books, commentaries and review articles.
Once the new College of Allopathic Medicine is officially accredited, Dr. Vieweg says they can begin to enroll students. The first class will entail 50 students, he adds.
“We’re interested in a diverse group of the best and brightest students in South Florida and out of state so that they can master and thrive in this challenging curriculum,” Dr. Vieweg says. “Bright students enjoy challenges, being exposed to early access to clinical care and being involved in research.”
