Kansas University officials wasted little time in selecting a new executive dean for the School of Medicine.

They announced Monday that Barbara Atkinson, chair of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine since 2000, would replace Deborah Powell, who last week accepted the dean position at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

“Dr. Powell felt that with several key recruitments currently under way and the new academic year beginning in early August, we should move forward quickly to appoint a new executive dean,” Donald Hagen, executive vice chancellor for the Med Center, said in a statement.

Atkinson, who starts Aug. 1, said she hoped to hit the ground running.

“Most schools these days are taking inside people because there’s so much going on and so much change going on,” she said. “A search could take six months, and if the dean is coming from the outside, it could take them six months to know what’s going on.”

Before coming to KU, Atkinson worked at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She served as dean of the MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine in Philadelphia from 1996 to 1999.

“After that one, I said I was never going to do another one,” she said. “It’s a tough job being a dean.”

But KU administrators convinced her otherwise.

“I like the people here,” she said. “I think the opportunity’s really fantastic here.”

She said funding would be the biggest issue facing the school in the next few years. Budget cuts this year forced the elimination of 35 positions and two outreach programs.

“It’s made an impact, absolutely, in every single department in the school,” she said. “The question’s really going to be what happens next. If it stays at this level, that’s one thing. It’s hard for me to imagine what an additional cut might mean.”

She said preserving the school’s budget would require increasing endowment, grant and state funding.

She said she was convinced attracting young researchers to KU and retaining others  such as prominent researchers Billy Hudson and S.K. Dey, who left for Vanderbilt University  also will require money.

She said the life science research initiative under way in Kansas City should be the school’s key to future success, as will the new research building approved by the Legislature.

“Definitely the life science initiative is really crucial,” she said. “We’ll have the new research building to support it. There’s a lot going on in that arena.”