LMP Remembers Deborah Powell
The Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology is remembering Dean Emerita, professor emerita and pioneering medical educator Deborah E. Powell who died Friday in Minneapolis. Powell joined the department with her late husband Ralph Dewey Powell, Jr. from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 2002 when she was recruited to be Medical School Dean, one of the first five women in the U.S. to achieve medical school deanship.
Born in the historic Massachusetts manufacturing town of Lynn, Powell grew up in the adjacent seaside community of Swampscott. In a 2003 interview for the National Library of Medicine’s “Celebrating America’s Women Physicians” exhibit, she said she became a physician for several reasons. “In high school I enjoyed sciences, especially biology, I had considered becoming a nurse because I was interested in health care but was very interested in the idea of a profession that provided help and support to people. Ultimately, I decided that I would be more challenged by a career as a physician.”
In a 2024 interview, Powell said she made her decision while still in high school and stuck with it through her undergraduate years at Radcliffe College. Upon graduating cum laude, she entered Tufts University School of Medicine, one of six women in her class. In medical school, Powell first contemplated a career in pediatrics, then internal medicine. The field of pathology has been the beneficiary of these two roads not taken by Powell. The chair of pathology at Georgetown University Medical Center, Abner Golden, offered her an internship in pathology. She accepted his offer and never looked back. A three-year residency in anatomic pathology at the National Cancer Institute’s Pathologic Anatomy Branch and a year as a research fellow at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control whetted her appetite for research.
After her residency and fellowship, Georgetown pathology chair Abner Golden offered her a faculty position, and she accepted. Powell was a national leader in medical education for decades. “That was because of Abner, who was a teacher,” Powell said in a 2024 interview. “When I was at Georgetown, he encouraged everybody to teach. And he innovated teaching at Georgetown. We gave lectures, but we also had smaller groups. He was always thinking about new ways to teach.”
Powell said Golden was a consummate mentor, and mentorship is key to building a pathology community. She and her husband Ralph (Tad) Powell agreed to join Golden when he took the position of pathology chair at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington. After 20 years there, nine of them as pathology chair herself, Powell accepted the position of dean at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. Five years later, in 2002, she was recruited by the University’s Medical School to serve as dean. Powell stepped down from that role in 2009 but not before designing and implementing a number of enduring educational innovations, among them the Flexible MD Program, which allows students to take a leave of absence from medical school and/or extend their graduation date, giving them time to participate in the experience they choose.
Powell said her proudest professional achievement was the EPAC Project. The American Association of Medical Colleges describes EPAC as a pilot study “to test the feasibility of medical education and training that is based on the demonstration of defined outcomes rather than on time, from early in medical school through completion of residency,” noting that the project is “the brainchild of Dr. Deborah Powell, Dean Emeritus of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.”
In 2000, Powell was elected to the Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine.
The Powell family is planning a commemoration and recognition event for Dr. Powell sometime next year. LMP faculty will be notified when the date and time are set.
“Powell’s retirement highlights a champion of medical education in an era of social change”
