A Recipe for Retirement
Dr. Richard Weisman plans to spend more time in the kitchen
By Damian McNamara
Photography by Tom Salyer
Richard S. Weisman, Pharm.D.
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rained in both pharmacy and cooking, Richard S. Weisman, Pharm.D., knows that the desired result comes from the right mix of ingredients. As associate dean for admissions and enrollment at the Miller School, Dr. Weisman has found that selecting the right mix of 200 applicants from a total of 10,000 each year is a similar, but rewarding, challenge. Now, however, he is stepping down.
“I’m 70 years old, and it’s time to settle down a little bit,” said Dr. Weisman, who has helped admit about 5,000 medical students over 25 years. “I think that my legacy really lies in the achievements of the students whom I’ve had an opportunity to be involved with. I’ve watched them go through the admissions process, get into medical school, and go out and be incredibly successful. The greatest pleasure that I get in the world right now is through their accomplishments.”
Dr. Weisman looks forward to gaining back time to pursue “two very great passions” in the next chapter of his life. One is tennis. An avid tennis player, he plays two or three times a week, mostly at night and on weekends, and competes in tournaments.
The other is cooking. “When I was working at NYU/Bellevue Hospital in New York City, I was very close to the Institute of Culinary Education, one of the preeminent cooking schools in the country,” Dr. Weisman said. He started taking evening classes and dreamed of becoming a chef.
After Dr. Weisman was recruited to the Miller School in 1994, his multiple roles in admissions, running the Poison Control Center, and playing tennis left little time for culinary interests. Still, he took occasional cooking classes when he could. Fast forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, and “all the major cooking schools went from having in-person training to being online,” he said. “I was able to complete online culinary classes toward becoming a chef.”
Dr. Weisman will remain at the Miller School as a professor of pediatrics and director of the Poison Control Center, but with more flexibility in his schedule, “one of my goals for retirement is spending three or four months in either France or Italy, taking my cooking to the next level with some of the best chefs in the world,” he said. “I also want to continue to play as much competitive tennis as I possibly can.” 
