President Milliken shared the following recap of his conversation with Chancellor Hawgood on his Substack, The Gold and the Blue, Volume 22:

I recently sat down with UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood for the latest in my series of conversations with UC campus leaders. You can watch our full conversation below:

Sam’s journey to UCSF began across the world. He grew up in a small beach town in Australia and attended medical school at the age of 17. He arrived in San Francisco fresh out of medical school on a two-year visa. Forty-four years later, UCSF is the only institution he has ever received a paycheck from. As he joked, that either means he loves the place or that he has a lack of imagination. (I think it’s the former.)

There are a lot of reasons to love UCSF. It’s unlike any other UC campus, made up of four nationally ranked professional schools and a world-class health system. Its legacy includes six Nobel laureates and a research enterprise that has grown from virtually nothing in 1963 to one of the top recipients of NIH funding in the country. Sam traced this transformation back to a handful of visionary faculty who were around in UCSF’s early years.

We discussed a topic that many of us continue to wrestle with: trust in higher education, science, and medicine. Sam believes part of the problem is a perception that academic medicine serves elites rather than the entire population. We both agree that humility, honesty, and looking towards the future are essential to addressing distrust and concerns in these important institutions. Chancellor Hawgood noted that universities should be speaking about what the institution is building towards rather than resting on its history.

On AI, Sam is an optimist. UCSF has already deployed AI scribes across its clinics, with patient consent, of course. This allows physicians to interact more intentionally and personally with patients rather than facing a computer screen, typing notes during appointments. He is far more cautious on AI when it comes to the clinical side than the research side, and he has built rigorous governance structures to ensure that AI tools are continuously evaluated during and after deployment, not just before.

We also spoke about UCSF’s work in the San Joaquin Valley, where it has had a presence in Fresno for 50 years at the graduate medical education level. The PRIME+ program — which provisionally admits incoming undergraduates from the Valley studying at UC Merced to UCSF’s medical school — is the next chapter. The first cohort will graduate in the spring. Sam described a roadmap to grow the program from 12 students per year to 50, and by around 2032, UCSF plans to hand the keys to UC Merced entirely to operate its own medical school. We’re all looking forward to seeing UC expand the reach of medical education and build a stronger pipeline of physicians to serve communities throughout the Valley.

I also asked Sam about his Friday ritual of attending a standing weekly lecture at Mission Bay, where faculty present unpublished work. He said he attends to remind himself about why UCSF does what it does and to make sure the scientists know that leadership has their back.

I’m grateful for Chancellor Hawgood’s leadership. He knows UCSF’s history well, understands the challenges it faces, and is focused on where it is going.

Photos from our Oakland event

The conversation with Chancellor Hawgood took place in front of a full room at the Broadway Conference Center in Oakland. Staff enjoyed tasty treats and drinks and a chance to catch up with colleagues before sitting down for the conversation with President Milliken. Thanks to everyone who joined us!

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