Harry Prystowsky, former College of Medicine dean and senior vice president for health affairs at The Hershey Medical Center died May 20, at the age of 74.
He served as dean for 13 years. In 1973 he was named dean and provost of the Penn State Medical Center and in 1984 was appointed to the new position of senior vice president for health affairs. He retired in 1986, but remained active on medical and community boards for many years.
During his tenure, the college, which accepted its first class of 40 students in 1967, graduated 1,139 students, or more than 90 percent of the total alumni of the college to that date. The medical center expanded from 218 to 550 acres, from 400 to 3,000 employees and from $20 million to more than $200 million in operating revenue.
New additions included a cancer research wing, a magnetic resonance imagining unit and facilities for critical care, clinical sciences, animal research and child psychiatry. Contracts and grants for research, education and service increased by 323 percent under his leadership and more than 1 million patients were served.
Before his appointment at Penn State, Prystowsky had been professor and chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, where an endowed chair in reproductive medicine was established in his name.