“This place feels like it is uniquely on the front foot,” Michael Englesbe, MD, said during his opening remarks at his introductory town hall at CU Anschutz on August 6, 2026.
Speaking to a packed auditorium of faculty, staff, and administrative leaders from across campus—including Dean John Sampson, MD, PhD, MBA—Englesbe spoke on three aspects that influence aspiring surgeons’ decisions when determining where to attend medical school: academic opportunity, culture of the department, and location.
After being named the new chair of the CU Anschutz Department of Surgery (DOS), Englesbe is eagerly anticipating moving to Colorado and starting his tenure November 1, 2026.
“I want to fall in love with the Department of Surgery and the organization. I want to learn about all the amazing work that is happening and all the inspired people who are doing the work. It’ll be such a privilege if I can nudge some of that work forward,” he says, adding, “I cannot wait.”
The department “needs to do more science,” Englesbe said plainly in his town hall, meaning there is room for improvement in securing grant funding for studies and research conducted by DOS faculty and trainees. By recruiting and training great physician-scientists, Englesbe believes CU can be among the best departments of surgery in the nation. His goal is to improve academic opportunities available to trainees, thereby committing to the promise of, “If you come here and do the work, we promise to make you successful.”
In a Grand Rounds lecture he gave at Thomas Jefferson University, Englesbe shared how he and some of the residents under his mentorship noticed a strange pattern several years ago, before the term “opioid crisis” was making headlines. As a transplant surgeon at the University of Michigan, Englesbe started seeing more organ donations from young athletes and teenagers who had died from drug overdoses. Curiosity led Englesbe to conduct research that contributed to the data that convinced surgeons to prescribe fewer opioids after surgery.
“Stay curious and fix your own problems” is one of Englesbe’s mantras. “Find some problem that you find particularly vexing, try to understand it in a deep way, and then try to fix it.” Physicians, he believes, often underestimate how uniquely equipped they are to bring about change.
Englesbe told a self-deprecating story that elicited chuckles from attendees during his town hall. Several years ago, at the University of Michigan, where he has been on faculty since 2004, one of his residents scrubbed out of a surgery with another attending physician to meet with Englesbe. Asked afterward what he had gleaned from this meeting, the resident replied, “Dr. Englesbe mostly talked about Dr. Englesbe.”
That willingness to laugh at himself reflects a sense of humility—a theme that comes up repeatedly with the surgeon. For instance, he describes the three children he shares with his wife, cardiologist Audrey Wu, MD, MS, MPH, as “better than us in all things.” While serving as chief of the transplant division and part of the pediatric transplant program at Michigan, Englesbe became director of the Michigan Collaborative Quality Initiative Portfolio in 2020, devoting about half his time to improving clinical practice. He will be the first to tell you that improving quality in the OR requires surgeons to be transparent about their own performance—even self-critical when the occasion calls for it. It is a trait he asks of his colleagues, and one he practices himself.
Englesbe refers to confidence and humility as two sides of the same coin.
“I think the key to humility is confidence,” Englesbe says. “Master surgeons are uniquely confident and know that vulnerability is not a sign of weakness. For a master surgeon to yield to a junior partner, to ask for help, to express concern and gratitude, and acknowledge excellence, these are the behaviors I aspire to cultivate and live by. I hope that if I don’t demonstrate these behaviors every day in my interactions, I will have trust enough in my colleagues to give me the feedback I need to continue to improve.”
At Michigan, under Englesbe’s leadership, the department of surgery utilizes 360-degree reviews, a system in which multiple people who have a touch point with the surgeon—regardless of job title—provide feedback on the surgeon. Surgeons are evaluated on technical performance, behavior, civility, and the environment they create in the OR. “I take surgeon behavior very seriously,” Englesbe shared during his town hall. “Surgeon behavior is the key to our culture of quality. I will work relentlessly on it.”
“We want to create a department where the most ambitious medical students want to become residents here; our most ambitious and talented residents want to become faculty here; and our junior faculty want to stay here for their careers as they serve this great organization.”
Englesbe credits the University of Michigan with giving him “the opportunity to be successful,” he explains. Notably, the university provided him with mentors who have been instrumental to his success. “My greatest mentor and sponsor was a transplant surgeon named Darrell ‘Skip’ Campbell,” Englesbe says. “He did so much for me and is such a kind and generous man. Mostly, his agenda was always to help me and not to serve himself, an approach I hope I emulate.”
Mentorship is something Englesbe feels passionately about. His plans for DOS include creating the space and opportunities faculty members need to mentor junior members of the department.
“Most faculty choose to be academic physicians in part to engage with trainees and train the next generation,” Englesbe says. “Mentorship is so much fun and so rewarding. The key for leadership, then, becomes making sure faculty have slack in their system because mentorship takes time.”
“My goal as chair is to listen to the faculty and try to understand how we can make their operational life as efficient and effective as possible so that they have the bandwidth to do the important work of mentorship.”
The final determinant for a medical student is location, and according to Englesbe, CU Anschutz doesn’t have to improve on this one. Instead, his plan is to “work relentlessly” on expanding academic opportunities and improving the culture of the department.
While his family is excited about his new role and its location, his wife and youngest son will remain in Michigan for the first year and a half while his son finishes high school. Wu plans to join CU’s cardiology faculty upon moving to Colorado. Though Englesbe is sure his two older children will visit him, he will miss his family—including his dog. “I think I’ll manage this by visiting them, vacationing awesomely, and working really, really hard for the department,” he says.