Students, staff respond to Keck dean resignation

Students, faculty and staff of the Keck School of Medicine of USC wrote and sent letters to University administration asking for more clarity surrounding USC’s announcement of Laura Mosqueda’s unexpected departure as dean of the school in late August. No official updated announcement has been released from the University. 

In an email sent to the Keck school Aug. 24, Provost Charles Zukoski wrote that Mosqueda was “stepping down” and would “take on a new role spearheading efforts to expand and advance geriatrics at the University.”

Students and faculty were shocked by the announcement, which came seemingly without warning. According to Tobi Fishel, clinical associate professor of pediatrics, members of the school’s faculty were not made aware of Mosqueda’s departure at all before the schoolwide announcement was made. 

Fishel wrote a letter to University administration asking for more information surrounding the former dean’s departure and demanding transparency between leadership and the wider University community. 

“My motivation is really about wanting to support transparency at USC,” Fishel said to the Daily Trojan. “It was important for me to also open dialogue and have communication with leadership about how many people were feeling. I think it’s important in a healthy organization for people to voice both what’s going well and what concerns we might have.” 

Fishel received written responses to her letter from the Academic Senate and the provost. She did not want to disclose the content of her letter because it was “not for publication.” 

“On a personal level, I probably wouldn’t be really satisfied with anything besides Dr. Mosqueda staying because I appreciated and loved her so much,” Fishel said, “but I did appreciate getting a response and opening a dialogue.”

The Social Justice in Medicine Coalition, a student organization at Keck that works to bring together diverse groups of students to promote equity in the medical field, also sent a letter Sept. 8 to University administration asking for an explanation behind Mosqueda’s “firing,” as it is referred to in the letter. The letter was signed by a total of 63 student organizations at Keck.

“The more we talked to the faculty, the more they were just so shocked that this has happened and didn’t really seem to think that it was all her wanting to move somewhere else, but that she was more likely, kind of, fired,” said Madeleine Ing, co-president of the Social Justice in Medicine Coalition. “We just thought it was really important that we publicize the fact of what we knew and what we had learned, that she was fired and [had] not simply left on her own volition.”

Mosqueda was the school’s first female dean, and due to with the lack of information surrounding her dismissal, students demanded further clarification in the letter. Mosqueda assumed the role after the resignation of Rohit Varma, who was accused of sexually harassing a researcher in 2003. Varma succeeded Carmen Puliafito, who used hard drugs before seeing patients. 

“With so little transparency, many of us are concerned that the dismissal was inappropriate and discriminatory — an alarming sign that USC’s leaders are falling into old patterns of behavior,” the letter read. 

The letter has not received a direct response from the USC administration at the time of publication. According to Ing, the only action that happened after the letter’s sending was the release of a video from Zukoski commenting on the former dean’s departure, and that the University was “looking for a greater integration of the academic medical enterprise with the University as a whole.” 

“It didn’t directly acknowledge us at all,” Ing said. “It kind of just reiterated a lot of what he had said in his initial announcement.”

Ing hopes that the letter showed administrators that Keck students want a say in who leads their school, and wants to be included in the decision-making process.

“If they keep saying that they care about what students think and want us to have a say in our education, the idea that they would get rid of a dean who really was here for the students, cared about social justice and had a lot of these tenets that we think are really important shows that they don’t really care about us at all,” Ing said. 

The Academic Senate, which represents the University’s faculty and works to promote the academic integrity of the University, did not respond to the Daily Trojan’s request for comment in time for publication.