Awards

W. George Pinnell Award for Outstanding Service - 2002

About Richard A. Haak

Haak has been selflessly serving IU and the School of Medicine since his appointment in the early 1970s. Since 1998, he has served as chair of the Microbiology and Immunology Graduate Student Recruitment Committee and of the Academic Standards Committee for 12 years. In 2000, to keep on top of management and organizational change in the medical curriculum, he attended the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Leaders in Medical Education.

Haak's colleagues speak gratefully about his role in the recent national accreditation review from the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME). As vice chair of the LCME's Institutional Self-Study Task Force Steering Committee, Haak took on this review of the IU School of Medicine—a review required of all institutions of medical education every seven years—which is no mean feat. The results are a document that is approximately one and one-half feet tall.

The boundaries of Haak's service extend well beyond Indiana. Haak was one of four other scientists in the United States to serve as an interviewer in Beijing for CUSBA, the China–U.S. Biochemistry Admissions Program, which helps place Chinese applicants in Ph.D. programs in the United States and Canada.