Gift from Anthem endows VCU professorship, honors outstanding clinician and teacher

By Joe Kuttenkuler

It seems only appropriate that a generous gift would create something honoring a person who has given so generously of himself.

During a recent ceremony, with friends and colleagues looking on, representatives from Anthem presented a $415,000 check to VCU's School of Medicine in the name of Dr. Orhan Muren, professor emeritus in the Division of Pulmonary Medicine at VCU. The gift fully endows the Orhan Muren Distinguished Professorship and recognizes a revered physician and teacher for his outstanding gifts to medicine.

In addition to preserving the legacy of one of the first physicians in Virginia to use fiber optics to diagnose patients with lung disease, the Distinguished Professorship will help maintain the high teaching standards Muren established and provide money to recruit and retain faculty to the Division of Pulmonary Critical Care at VCU. The professorship also will ensure that faculty have dedicated clinical research time.

"Orhan embodies the best a professor can be. He's a great human, a friend, a mentor, a listener, a gifted teacher without peer, and a superb diagnostician," said Dick Grinnan, M.D., a 1969 graduate of the medical school who trained as a fellow in pulmonary medicine under Muren. "He had an encyclopedic knowledge of medicine and an intense desire to pass that knowledge on to others."

Over the last two years, many of Muren's former students have generously contributed toward the professorship - evidence that the value of his influence has made a tremendous impact.

"Perhaps even more important than his skills at patient care was his influence on the hundreds of physicians - medical students, residents, fellows and colleagues, with whom he had contact," said Chair of the Division of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine, Alpha Fowler, M.D., who completed his residency training at the VCU Medical Center (then MCV Hospitals) in 1979. "I was fortunate enough to be one of them, and the impact he had on me was lifelong."

The Turkish-born Muren began his medical education in 1939 by capturing one of only a handful of coveted spots in the freshman class at the University of Istanbul. He later served in the Turkish Army Medical Corps. Following his immigration to the United States, Muren attended the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he trained as a fellow in Pulmonary Diseases and Tuberculosis. He subsequently completed a fellowship in cardiology at Howard University before coming to VCU (then the Medical College of Virginia) in 1958.

In the late 1960s, Muren became one the institution's and the nation's first intensivists in the newly established Respiratory Intensive Care Unit. During his tenure, Muren cared for literally thousands of patients and was repeatedly recognized as one of the institutions most accomplished clinicians and teachers - winning the Best Faculty/Teacher Award for the School of Medicine for 22 consecutive years. In 1991, Muren became professor emeritus, retiring from full-time physician duties.

"Anthem's gift is a wonderful contribution to the teaching of pulmonary and critical care at VCU and to the legacy of Orhan Muren," said Sheldon Retchin, M.D., vice president for Health Sciences for VCU. "In his long career, Dr. Muren exhibited a love for teaching that was unprecedented - and will be difficult to duplicate."

During his closing remarks, Grinnan, who works for Anthem in quality support services, summed up the impact many feel Muren has had during his tenure at VCU. "He is a gentleman of short stature who in my mind will always be ten feet tall."