Dr. Barbara Jung shares her vision for leading the University of California San Diego School of Medicine

By Joyce Pritchett, UC San Diego

t’s been said that great leaders don’t set out to be leaders, instead they set out to make a difference. For Barbara Jung, M.D., the newly appointed Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, making a difference has always been on her radar.

“I’ve always been a big picture person,” said Jung, who assumed the role of dean as of January 1, 2025. “I always ask myself, ‘How does what we do affect others? How can we work better together? How does whatever we are doing fit into a greater goal?’”

With that enthusiasm for forward thinking and a commitment to supporting people, Jung is looking forward to her return to San Diego and the School of Medicine.

“I’ve always followed UC San Diego from afar,” said Jung. “I trained here and it’s the place where I became an academician. I have seen the institution blossom. There is a lot of national buzz about UC San Diego and that is exciting. It is a challenging time for many academic medical centers, but I see so much opportunity and energy here, and I believe we will set ourselves apart. I so look forward to engaging with the people here and working together to elevate the School of Medicine to even greater heights.”

“We are eager to welcome Dr. Barbara Jung back to UC San Diego as Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of the School of Medicine,” said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “Her remarkable career, characterized by leadership in academic medicine, clinical practice and groundbreaking research, uniquely positions her to lead one of the nation’s top medical schools. Dr. Jung’s visionary leadership, commitment to excellence, diversity and inclusion will strengthen our mission to train the next generation of health care professionals, improve health outcomes and push the frontiers of innovative research.”

Anchoring back to the beginning

Jung, who was born in Oregon, but grew up in Munich, Germany completed medical school in Germany. She was considering residency training in Germany in either obstetrics/gynecology, surgery or internal medicine when a mentor suggested she consider a post-doctoral position in a lab in the United States. After some consideration, Jung agreed and ended up at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in San Diego working in colorectal cancer research. After three years in the lab, Jung was accepted into the School of Medicine’s internal medicine residency program through the physician-scientist training pathway, followed by a three-year gastroenterology fellowship.

“I love medicine and gastroenterology,” said Jung. “We take care of the acute and the chronic, the young and the old, procedural and non-procedural care. It’s really a wonderful subspecialty.”

UC San Diego not only provided Jung the early support and experience she needed to set her career path, it holds a special place in her heart as she also met her husband here. Gerald Tolbert, M.D. was serving as an assistant program director for an academic outreach program geared towards high school students when they were introduced through a mutual friend (who also still works on campus). Later Jung remained in San Diego, while Tolbert matriculated into and completed medical school at Wayne State University. After he matched into an emergency medicine residency program in Chicago, Jung relocated with him as a faculty member at Northwestern University where she led a comprehensive gastroenterology cancer genetics program.

“I remember sitting in very vibrant faculty meetings at Northwestern,” said Jung. “We discussed various things that we could do within the division and outside the division. I started getting approached by people outside the organization who would want to join us professionally and I would hand them off to potentially be recruited and that’s when I started thinking it would be really fun to be setting direction on some of these larger endeavors.”

Jung had to weigh the benefits of remaining in a divisional support role, focusing on her own clinical care and research program, versus less individual work and stepping into leadership with the potential for more substantial impacts. The draw of focusing on the bigger picture and helping more people swayed Jung to accept a position as the chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she served for six years.

For the last five years, Jung has served at the University of Washington as professor and Robert G. Petersdorf Endowed Chair in Medicine, overseeing the academic, clinical and research missions of one of the largest departments of medicine in the country.

“The role of leader and mentor was evident in the skillset of Dr. Jung as a training fellow and junior faculty physician scientist at UC San Diego School of Medicine in the early 2000’s,” said John M. Carethers, M.D., vice chancellor for Health Sciences. “Dr. Jung further honed her skills as a leader in medicine as a division chief and most recently department chair. Her selection as dean fosters that observation of her leadership capacity and excellence that we know will apply and guide the School of Medicine forward.  As Dr. Jung returns to her rooted beginnings, she will now steer and enhance the School of Medicine’s tripartite mission for our students, trainees, faculty, staff, institution, as well as the region and nation.”

The path forward

As she prepares to take the helm at School of Medicine, Jung said one thing she is most looking forward to is empowering the community already in place.

“I really enjoy being at the table when strategic direction is being set,” said Jung. “Academia can be complicated, but that’s also what makes it so innovative. Academic medicine is becoming more diverse and more reflective of the patients we serve. I want to be a leader who helps bring everyone together. I want to empower staff to do what they need to do. I want the students to get the most out of their learning so they can become leaders in their own right, I want trainees really making the most of their experience here so that they can give back to their communities as soon as they are done training. I want faculty to be able to reach their full potential. I try to lead with understanding what people need and then empower them to be able to do what they need to do.”

Jung is also looking forward to making new connections and fostering innovation at all levels, by listening and engaging across the School of Medicine from students and trainees to faculty and staff.

“We all share a very strong and common purpose,” said Jung. “We all want to feel that our lives have meaning no matter where we are along our journey. I think it’s important to think about the whole person – where we are in our careers and what we each need to thrive individually and as teams. I want to help people identify where they are at in terms of their career development, job satisfaction and work-life balance, knowing that that can look different for every person, and then consider what the group wants and needs.”

For Jung, work life balance includes spending time reading, swimming, walking on the beach or cooking with her family. She is proud of her multi-generational household which includes her mother; her husband, Tolbert, who will be joining the Department of Emergency Medicine, as well as the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion and UC San Diego Health Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Departmentto continue impacting health equity and compassionate service; son Timothy, who is in middle school and daughter Zoe, who is studying at Columbia University.

“We are a very social family,” said Jung. “We like to prepare meals and eat together. While I recharge by watching the ocean or reading a book, family time is also very important to me. In San Diego, there are so many opportunities to reconnect with nature, be it up in the mountains or at the water.  I am really looking forward to returning and taking advantage of everything San Diego has to offer.”