University Of Minnesota

Tom Lehman's home in Arizona will be minus one of its prized possessions this week. It was taken right before Lehman and his family packed up for their trip to Scotland. Taken right off the mantel in the living room."I could see it every time I walked in the front door," Lehman said last month.Actually, Lehman took it.And Lehman hopes to bring it back when he and the family return next week.It is a claret jug. Lehman brought it home to Scottsdale after winning last year's British Open. Having recently returned it to the folks at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, Lehman would like to borrow it for another year.

Names in the newsRandy Landis was recently appointed mortgage loan officer of Severn Savings Bank FSB. He specializes in residential lending, particularly land acquisition, development and construction financing. Landis was formerly on the staff of Washington Savings Bank FSB, and completed his education at the University of Minnesota. He lives in Annapolis with his wife, Lois, and their three children. He is active in the Germantown Elementary School PTA.Pub Date: 12/22/96@

After months of protest by faculty members, the University of Minnesota's governing board of regents has abandoned a plan to make it easier to dismiss tenured professors from most of its campuses, but it passed such a measure for the law school.The regents had sought the authority to dismiss professors whose programs were eliminated and to cut salaries for reasons other than financial emergency.Tenured professors now have lifetime employment unless a financial emergency is declared or in a case of individual misconduct.

Minnesota's public university system is exploring revisions to the faculty tenure code that would allow cuts for the first time in professors' salaries for reasons other than financial emergency and would allow the dismissal of professors if their programs were eliminated.Under the current code, tenured professors can be laid off only if a department or a college is closed.In response, some faculty members have begun a drive to organize a union that would represent the 3,000 or so professors at the university system's four campuses.

Today and tomorrow, Dr. William R. Brody will be poked and provoked by doctors, administrators and professors weighing whether he is the right person to lead the Johns Hopkins University into the next century.Those who know him suggest the University of Minnesota administrator and former Hopkins department chairman wants the top job here. And those who like Dr. Brody say he would be good at it."I've always had the sense that Bill was interested in becoming a university president," said Dr. Michael E. Johns, dean of Hopkins' Medical School, an admirer and an occasional fishing companion of Dr. Brody's.

Dr. William R. Brody, a physician and entrepreneur who oversees the University of Minnesota health care center, has emerged as a leading candidate to become the president of the Johns Hopkins University.Appointed to head Hopkins Medical School's radiology department in 1987, Dr. Brody left Baltimore in the summer of 1994 to become provost for health sciences at the University of Minnesota health center in Minneapolis. He is scheduled to visit the Hopkins campus this month for several days for in-depth interviews with faculty members, administrators and trustees, several physicians at Hopkins said.

AN especially odd, ethically loathsome feature of health insurance coverage in America is the emerging practice of setting a monetary cap on the amount of coverage if you get sick.More and more insurance companies and private insurance plans are setting caps on what they will pay hospitals and nursing homes for treating particular diseases. The insurance plans are saying, in effect, that some diseases are worth paying more for than others.Allowing insurance plans to decide which diseases are worthy of care is about as absurd a place to put moral responsibility as can be imagined.

THERE is no dispute that America leads the world in biomedical research. As President Clinton tries to restructure an economy built on 19th- and 20th-century products to meet the demands of the next century, American pre-eminence in biomedicine holds out the best hope of serving as the engine capable of driving that economy.That is why every American ought be deeply concerned about the cancer that is quietly weakening the foundations of biomedical research -- conflict of interest. Recent events at the University of Minnesota's medical school illustrate just how serious the problem of conflict of interest has become and just how ineptly government, universities and legislators are dealing with it.On Feb. 18, University of Minnesota President Nils Hasslemo asked for and received the resignation of Dr. John Najarian as the chairman of the department of surgery.

TZVEE ZAHAVY had been teaching at University of Minnesota for 17 years. Last year, he received an offer from University of North Carolina at Charlotte for a prestigious endowed professorship: $85,000 a year to be the Isaac Swift distinguished professor of Judaic studies.The offer was tempting. But he liked Minnesota, which offered him a 16 percent raise to $61,400. What to do?He just said yes -- to both. He taught in Charlotte on Monday and Wednesday, hopped a plane to Minneapolis Wednesday night ("I worked hard to get the best fare," Dr. Zahavy told Minnesota Daily)

Denny Neagle of Gambrills made national headlines yesterday when he was traded from the Minnesota Twins to Pittsburgh along with a minor-league outfielder for 20-game winner John Smiley, who was asking for more than the Pirates would pay."I have mixed emotions," said Neagle, a 23-year-old left-hander who was 9-4 with a 3.27 ERA at Triple-A Portland last season and 0-1 with a 4.05 ERA in seven starts with Minnesota. "I'm happy I'll get a good opportunity with the Pirates, but on the other hand I'll have to make a lot of new friends and get used to a new organization."