The Edward and Margaret Doisy School of Allied Health Professions now has the longest and newest name of all the schools at Saint Louis University. The School of Allied Health was renamed on April 19, after the Nobel Prize-winning professor and his wife.

Doisy, who was a Distinguished Service Professor and Director Emeritus of the Department of Biochemistry, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1943 for isolating Vitamin K and has since donated much of the income derived from the commercial application of his findings to SLU.

Along with a new name, the School of Allied Health has been operating under an interim dean all year. Joan Hrubetz, Ph.D., has been the dean of both the School of Nursing and the School of Allied Health since August.

“It has been difficult for me, but there’s been so much cooperation,” Hrubetz said. “If you’re a leader and you’ve got really good people in key leadership positions, all you have to do is keep in touch. And that’s what I’ve got.”

Hrubetz said that she generally splits her weeks between the two buildings.

“I try to spend two to three days at each building each week and avoid running back and forth between the two,” Hrubetz said. “It’s been very demanding, but I think everyone’s happy.”

She added, “I don’t know the Allied Health people very well, but I know they are very cooperative, very dedicated professors.”

Irma Ruebling, MA, Department Chair of the Physical Therapy Department, said that she thinks Hrubetz has done a good job of trying to learn about the different professions in the School and has a nice personality.

“Dr. Hrubetz is very approachable and a very good listener. She’s got a great sense of humor and seems very open to the ideas of initiatives of the faculty,” Ruebling said.

“She respects the education and health-care knowledge of the faculty as well,” she continued.

There will be a committee set up this summer to search for a permanent dean of the School of Allied Health. Hrubetz said that she thinks both jobs could be done by one person.

She said, “One person could be the dean of both if [he or she was] energetic and on the upside of [his or her] career. I’m on the downside of my career.”

The Planning Committees of both the School of Nursing and the School of Allied Health will be deciding within four to eight weeks whether or not both schools can be run by one dean.