Marcelle Willock (Questrom’89) broke many barriers; in 2019, she was appointed the BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine’s first Black professor emerita in recognition of her lifetime contributions to the University and her field.

Tributes

Marcelle Willock, Former BU Chair of Anesthesiology, Was a Pioneering Physician

Alum was the first Black woman to chair a department at the medical school

MARCELLE M. WILLOCK, a professor emerita of anesthesiology at BU’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and chair of the department from 1982 to 1998, died on October 12, 2022. She was 84. Willock (Questrom’89) was among the first women of color to lead an academic and clinical department in the United States.

As a child, Willock dreamed of becoming a doctor. “That’s the only thing I wanted to do from the time I was four years old,” she told Bostonia in 2020. “The family doctor who delivered me was a friend of our family. I loved him and I decided I was going to be a doctor, like him. My parents never told me I couldn’t do something because I was a girl.”

But Willock would face—and overcome—discrimination.

“Growing up in Panama and Guyana, being Black was not such an obstacle, and I had opportunities for a good education,” Willock told Bostonia. “But women were still very much behind. So for me, my gender was more of an obstacle than my race. But after I got to this country and I got further along and became more prominent, it became a battle of the two—race and gender. Both were obstacles. I think I’ve weathered the obstacles.”

She came to the United States to attend the College of New Rochelle, a Catholic women’s school in suburban New York. She graduated from Howard University College of Medicine in 1962 and planned to become a surgeon.

“Because I was a woman and a minority, I was limited where I could apply for a surgical internship,” she told Bostonia. “I applied to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and I was accepted in surgery, and then when I got there, that was probably my first experience of discrimination. I was the only woman in the surgical group and the only person of color, out of maybe 10 people.”

She recalled that surgical cases were taken away from her: “Instead of being sent to the operating room, I was sent to take care of my patients on the floor. I presumed it was because I was a female. There were hardly any females in surgery at the time.”

Willock found that she liked taking care of the patients—“and that is sort of what anesthesiologists do when the surgeons are operating.” She went on to complete a residency in anesthesiology at Columbia ’s Presbyterian Hospital, in New York City.

She was a faculty member at New York University School of Medicine before joining the faculty at Columbia University. She earned a master’s in higher education at Columbia’s Teachers College and later received an MBA at BU’s Questrom School of Business.

In 1982, Willock became a professor and chair of the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine’s anesthesiology department. She was the first Black woman to chair a department at the school and the first Black woman to lead the department of anesthesiology at the former Boston University Medical Center Hospital and Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center, BU medical school’s primary teaching hospital). She also was among the first women of color to lead an academic and clinical department in the United States.

Willock, who was chair for 16 years, was responsible for many innovations, including the accreditation of the medical school’s residency program in anesthesia and the standardization of guidelines for anesthesia related to patient safety.

And in the early 1980s, when dentists were providing anesthesia care to patients at Boston City Hospital, Willock succeeded in ending the practice and ensuring that only qualified physician anesthesiologists could provide anesthesia.

After several years as the medical school’s associate provost for community affairs, Willock left BU in 2002 to become the first female dean of the Charles R. Drew University College of Medicine. She retired in 2005 and returned to Boston.

Willock supported two important funds at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine: the Violeta Martinez and Rafael Ortega Anesthesiology Research Fund and the Marcelle M. Willock, MD, Faculty Development & Diversity Program, a longitudinal leadership development program for faculty from underrepresented groups in medicine.

She served on many committees on BU’s Medical Campus. She also was president of the Massachusetts Society of Anesthesiologists and president of the Society of Academic Chairs and held leadership positions in the American Society of Anesthesiologists. She served as president of the Louis and Martha Deveaux Foundation, a charitable organization, founded by her grandparents, in the Republic of Panama.

In 2019, Willock was appointed the medical school’s first Black professor emerita in recognition of her lifetime contributions to the University and her field.

“You are living history,” said Rafael Ortega, current chair of the school’s department of anesthesiology, at the ceremony celebrating her appointment. “As professor emerita, Dr. Willock enriches our roster of faculty who have made great contributions to our school of medicine. This appointment sends a strong message that we value her contributions and that we recognize her as a role model for our students, residents, and faculty alike.”