Ohio Wesleyan University was the right school at the right time for me. I was looking for a small liberal arts college that would allow me to explore various fields of study because I was unsure of what I wanted to do in life. Ohio Wesleyan had a dedicated faculty that wanted to teach. My life was shaped by two outstanding faculty members: Dr. Howard Maxwell and Dr. Libuse Reed, a physics professor and report writing course director, respectively.
My first two years at Ohio Wesleyan were spent taking many of the required courses, and those courses—namely, science and math—allowed me to see beyond my comfort zone. Economics, philosophy, and speech were difficult for me. By the time I was to start the third year of college, I thought I might want to enter medicine.
The word on campus was that if you did well in Dr. Maxwell’s physic course, he would write a letter of recommendation and you would get into medical school. I never worked as hard as I did in that course, and that work ethic has stuck with me today.
When thinking of what courses I should take my senior year, I went to Dr. Maxwell and asked for advice. I thought he would urge me to take more science, but he suggested just the opposite: report writing, music appreciation, history, and Shakespeare. Again, these were areas that did not fit into my comfort zone, but they made me stretch.
Report writing was probably the most difficult. My first paper came back with more red than my words. At one point we were asked to do a full report on a subject of our choosing. I wrote a report on losers in medicine. Thinking back 50 years the report was ahead of its time. Dr. Reed taught me how to organize my thoughts more clearly and express those thoughts using words sparingly.
The broad experience I had at Ohio Wesleyan allowed me to see the world through a bigger lens. The humanism that existed at Ohio Wesleyan was real. The skills that I learned enabled me to not only be a physician but also to be a leader at a major academic medical center—Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Edward Miller was named chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, the 13th dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and vice president for medicine of the Johns Hopkins University in January 1997. As CEO, Dr. Miller was responsible for both the school and the health system and reported directly to the university president and the chairman of the board of Johns Hopkins Medicine. He also became Johns Hopkins Medicine’s chief fundraiser, presiding over a campaign that brought in $2.2 billion, more than any other academic medical institution has attracted in a single campaign.
An anesthesiologist who has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific papers, abstracts and book chapters, Miller joined Johns Hopkins in 1994 as professor and director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and was named interim dean of the school of medicine in 1996. He came to Hopkins after eight years at Columbia University, where he served as professor and chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology. Prior to that, he spent 11 years at the University of Virginia.
The recipient of an NIH Career Research Development Award, Miller has served as president of the Association of University Anesthesiologists, editor of
Anesthesia and Analgesia, and editor of
Critical Care Medicine. He served on the board of the International Anesthesia Research Society and was chairman of the FDA’s Advisory Committee on Anesthesia and Life Support Drugs.
Miller is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Anaesthetists. He also is a member of the State of Maryland’s Health Care Access and Cost Commission and serves on the boards of PNC Mutual Funds and CareFusion.
Miller received his BA from Ohio Wesleyan University and his MD from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He was a surgical intern at University Hospital in Boston, chief resident in anesthesiology at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, and a research fellow in physiology at Harvard Medical School. He also spent a sabbatical year as a senior scientist in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology of Hospital Necker in Paris.