The origin of the Medical College of Virginia dates back to 1838 when it began as the Medical Department of Hampden-Sidney College, an esteemed private Liberal Arts College for men established in 1775 near Farmville, Virginia. Nearly 70 years later, the Medical Department of Hampden-Sidney College received an independent charter from the Virginia General Assembly and became the Medical College of Virginia. In 1968, the Virginia General Assembly created Virginia Commonwealth University with the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and the Richmond Professional Institute. Although many graduates still refer to their alma mater as MCV, to be technically correct MCV is now the Medical College of Virginia campus of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
The Department of Biostatistics originated in 1958 as the Division of Biometry within the Department of Biophysics and Biometry in the autonomous Medical College of Virginia (MCV). The Division of Biometry was headed by Dr. Malcolm Turner. At that time biometry was defined as the study and application of mathematical and statistical research to biological subjects, and Dr. Turner considered himself to be a biometrician rather than a biostatistician.
In 1963 Dr. Turner left the MCV, and the Division of Biometry split off from the Department of Biophysics and Biometry to become an independent Department of Biometry within the MCV. After an international search, Dr. James Kilpatrick was recruited to head the Department of Biometry in 1965. The primary charge given to the chair was to provide statistical and computing assistance to investigators throughout the MCV in order to facilitate research. Other objectives of the new department included provision of courses and lectures in statistics within the several professional schools, pursuit of research, and provision of a graduate training program in biometry.
In order to accomplish these goals, the Scientific Computation Laboratory became part of the Department in 1965. In addition to the chair, the Department consisted of one master’s level faculty member, Ms Eleanor Campbell, and two computer assistants: Vernon Williams and Sharon Crews, who ran the RPC 4000 Royal McBee computer. This primitive computer had a 4K hard drive and paper tape entry. A suite of simple biostatistical programs had been written for the computer in FORTRAN by the staff. At that time this was the only computer devoted to research on the MCV campus. NIH grants sustained the Scientific Computation Laboratory, and an IBM 1130 with 16K and card entry was purchased to replace the RPC 4000. At this time the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) was introduced and implemented on this computer.
The Department expanded in the late 1960s with the recruitment of Roger Flora, PhD, from West Virginia University and the appointment of Walter Hansbrough (Hans) Carter, Jr. who had just received his PhD from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. In 1967 they developed a graduate training program in biometry, offering the MS and PhD degrees, when a full-time dean of the graduate school was appointed. The first students: Dave Weiss and Mike Hogye, were enrolled in the new graduate training program in 1969. In order to activate the mathematical component of the Department, Dr. Charles Church was recruited. In 1972 the faculty petitioned the administration to change the name of the Department from Biometry to Biostatistics, to better reflect the Department’s activities and interests. The administration agreed, and the newly named Biostatistics Department was located in the basement of Sanger Hall, named in honor of Dr. William T. Sanger, the third president of the college and founding trustee of the Medical College.
In 1983 Dr. Kilpatrick stepped down as chair, and Dr. Carter was promoted to chair the Department. Under Dr. Carter’s leadership, the Department grew to include 10 full-time faculty members and 15 doctoral candidates with an expansion of its collaborative research activities across the entire VCU campus.
After Dr. Carter retired in 2004, Dr. R.K. Elswick served as interim chair until 2007. The Department continued to grow in size and scope under Dr. Elswick’s leadership with the addition of four new faculty members. After a search was undertaken for a new chair, Dr. Shumei Sun of Wright State University’s Boonshoft Medical School accepted the position of chair of the Department of Biostatistics in November, 2007.