Inspiring the New Generation: Learning, Teaching, and Exploring with Dr. Greg Kalemkerian

OncoDaily Walk and Talk is a series of interviews done by Tatev Margaryan, a public health practitioner from Armenia, with various oncologists worldwide. These interviews differ in their presentation.

Dr. Greg Kalemkerian, a thoracic oncologist from the University of Michigan, joins host Tatev Margaryan in this episode of Walk and Talk on OncoDaily. Discover Dr. Kalemkerian’s vision of a perfect day, filled with family time and local activities in Ann Arbor. Learn about his passion for teaching and mentoring, and the immense satisfaction he derives from seeing his trainees flourish in their careers.

Gregory Peter Kalemkerian is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan, where he serves as Associate Division Chief for Faculty Development and Education, Associate Director of the Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program, and Co-Director of the Thoracic Oncology Clinical Research Team. He formerly chaired the NCCN Small Cell Lung Cancer Guideline Panel and treats lung cancer, thymoma, and mesothelioma. He has received awards such as the ASCO Excellence in Teaching Award and the University of Michigan Outstanding Clinician Award and has authored numerous research articles, reviews, commentaries, and book chapters.

Tatev Margaryan is the coordinator of the Blood Bank of Armenia at the Yeolyan Hematology and Oncology Center. Currently, she is the project manager of OncoDaily and a patient advocate at the Institute of Cancer and Crisis.

Tatev Margaryan: Hello everyone and welcome back to Walk and Talk on OncoDaily. My name is Tatev Margaryan, I’m your host as always, and today we have Dr. Kalemkerian as our guest. Dr. Kalemkerian, can you please introduce yourself?

Greg Kalemkerian: Yeah, I’m Greg Kalemkerian, I’m a medical oncologist specializing in thoracic oncology or lung cancer treatment at the University of Michigan.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay, thank you. So, Dr. Kalemkarian, we’re going to take a little walk.

Greg Kalemkerian: Sure thing.

Tatev Margaryan: And I’m going to ask you a couple of personal, silly, funny, maybe deep questions. Okay. So, let’s get going.

Greg Kalemkerian: You bet. Okay, perfect. So, let’s get started.

Tatev Margaryan: So, you are a very busy person, I know that. What does your perfect day look like?

Greg Kalemkerian: My perfect day probably has nothing to do with medicine. Yeah, that’s what I would say.

My perfect day would be, you know, getting up at home, relaxing with my wife, and, you know, potentially with my children. My children are grown. So, you know, the perfect day might have been a number of years ago when the kids were still small, when the kids were still at home, but that’s not going to happen anymore until I have grandchildren, which I don’t have yet.

So, you know, relaxing with the family, doing things around our town. You know, Ann Arbor has a lot of open spaces, a lot of places to go, and a lot of things to do outdoors, and playing with the kids, and doing things with the kids, and doing things with my wife around town. You know, relaxing.
Relaxing. That’s kind of the perfect day. I’m not a big traveler or anything, so it’s not like I feel I have to go somewhere to have fun.
I prefer to have fun around people that, you know, are meaningful to me.

Tatev Margaryan: Oh, that’s so nice. You’re a family person then?

Greg Kalemkerian: Yeah, I try to be, as much as work allows it.

Tatev Margaryan: I can imagine. But it sounds like you’re trying, so…

Greg Kalemkerian: We tried. Yeah, we tried.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. What about your job? I know that you are quite passionate and like what you do. What excites you most about what you’re doing?

Greg Kalemkerian: What excites me most is the teaching aspect of it.
Yep, I spend most of my time taking care of people with cancer, and that is very meaningful, and gives you a lot of satisfaction at times. But really, the teaching, the seeing the junior people develop, seeing them move on.

So, a couple of days ago at the ASCO meeting, they had the plenary session, the big session, and the fellow who was my first trainee when I started on faculty, he was an intern at the time, a resident and an intern at Wayne State University, where I started my career.
He gave one of the plenary sessions up there.

Tatev Margaryan: Are you proud?

Greg Kalemkerian: Very much so. Seeing him up there and what he has become, he’s a cancer center director, he’s got an endowed professorship, and seeing how far he has come and what became of his career.

I have several former trainees who are like that, who are bridging to the top of their fields, and that’s what’s satisfying. Because when you’re teaching, you can amplify what you could do as a person, and seeing them go beyond what you could do and what you have done is just so satisfying.

To work with the young people, to get their new ideas and hear their new ideas and develop things with them is really what keeps me going at this point, is working with the younger people.

Tatev Margaryan: Also seeing the results.

Greg Kalemkerian: And seeing the results, seeing that it did pay off over time. However, which way you can inspire them, even if they went well beyond what you could do, at least you got them on the right track.
You got them going initially. You can’t take full credit, but you can at least think you got them on the right track.

Tatev Margaryan: I know a couple of people who are inspired by you, so talking from their perspective, you are doing a wonderful job in assuring that the future of medicine, the future of humanity, you could say, is, I do believe, in good hands.

Greg Kalemkerian: Thank you, thank you. And I’ll tell you, working with Mane, who’s taking the pictures here, and others in Armenia for the last couple of years has been probably the most enjoyable thing I do with my time right now. So it’s just being able to give back.

I mean, I realize, you know, every day as a diaspora Armenian, you know, you realize how lucky we were to have my grandparents end up in the United States. And there’s always a little bit of a pull and push, because you realize that your luck was due to other people’s very bad luck at that time when they came over.

That’s life, right? And that’s the way it works.
You have to come to some grips with that, but being able to give back a little bit, you know, and help in any way possible, asking Gevorg and Mane, what do you need? You know, what can we do to help? And trying to pay it forward in that way.

Tatev Margaryan: We are so thankful to you for that, for your thoughtful gestures towards us in Armenia. Well, I think it’s worth it.

Greg Kalemkerian: It gives me a lot of pleasure. I hope we’re getting something out of it. Oh, we are.
I enjoy it. Just as much as we, I think.

Tatev Margaryan: So thank you for that. Okay. Another question is, you said that you don’t like to travel, but do you have a bucket list? Do you have anything on your bucket list that you haven’t done yet, but really want to or about to?

Greg Kalemkerian: Not really. You know, as a family, one thing that we enjoy doing, and maybe part of our perfect day does maybe involve some travel, is we go to the national parks as a family.

In fact, even last year when the boys are grown up and everything, we still did it, right? And, you know, hitting more of the national parks. We’ve been to about 15, 20 national parks in the United States, and there are 50 some odd, I think, national parks in the United States. So, you know, continuing to do those parks with the boys and hopefully at some point in time with their families, you know, would be something that I want to continue doing.

Tatev Margaryan: Which is the next one in the list?

Greg Kalemkerian: They’re talking about Yosemite, which I have been to, but I was alone years ago when I went there. That’s different now, isn’t it? And, you know, talk about going with them. You have to pick the right time.
Now that they’re out of school, it’s probably easier because you can go at the off times, because it’s too busy during the summer.

Tatev Margaryan: Sounds like you have a plan there.

Greg Kalemkerian: And we’d like to get up to some of the more northern ones, like in Montana and Alaska as well. It does sound like a bucket list, though. Yeah, yeah.
Except I’m not looking at kicking off any time soon. Other than that. Well, come on.
You never know.

Tatev Margaryan: Maybe not to that extent.

Greg Kalemkerian: Yeah, right.

Tatev Margaryan: Okay. Sounds fun, I guess. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, getting out there and, you know, hiking and doing things in the wilderness is fun. Would you ever change your profession?

Greg Kalemkerian: Would I change? At this point?

Tatev Margaryan: Would you like to? If you could, maybe. Would have you changed it at some point?

Greg Kalemkerian: Well, you know, the thing I’ve been looking for a little bit now, because I am nearing, you know, I’ve got to look realistically, I’m nearing the probably the latter part, the end of my career, is trying to get into something where the teaching is the primary thing I do, rather than being a secondary thing that I do.

So that’s what I’ve been looking for. It’s not easy to find that kind of position in the United States, in medicine. Yeah, I know.
Lots of competition as well, right? Lots of competition. And if you’re an MD, right, you’re expected to make money for the institution by seeing patients. That’s what makes money.

Teaching doesn’t make money. Yeah, that’s true. So I’ve been looking for, you’ve got a pole behind your new name, I’ve been looking for, you know, things where I can do more focus on the teaching rather than being an ancillary thing.
And if I think about what I would have done if I hadn’t gone into medicine, you know, I probably would have been teaching. Either whether it’s high school or college type teaching is probably what I would have done.

So you really, really like it.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I enjoy seeing people learn new things and develop. And, you know, teaching is the best way to learn as well.

Tatev Margaryan: Oh, really? Is it? So teaching keeps you learning other things in order to teach it to other people.

Greg Kalemkerian: And you have to learn it really well in order to teach it. That’s true.
And in oncology and medicine in general, things are changing all the time. Oh, yes, drastically and very fast. Right.
And talking to the younger people, the questions they ask, it always keeps you on your toes, keeps you learning new things and moving forward, which you have to in oncology because it changes so fast.

Tatev Margaryan: Yeah, that’s true. Okay, thank you so much, Dr. Kalemkerian for accepting our invitation, for doing this with me.
And thank you, everyone, for watching us. Stay tuned for a further walk and talk to OncoDaily. It was Tatev Margaryan and Greg Kalemkerian for you today.
See you. Thank you.

Previous episodes of OncoDaily Walk and Talk with Tatev Margaryan

Episode 1: Yelena Janjigian

Episode 2: John Gore

Episode 3: Philip Philip, Celine Philip

Episode 4: Maite Gorostegui

Episode 5: Enrique Soto

Episode 6: Dinesh Pendharkar

Episode 7: Giuseppe Saglio

Episode 8: Marina Konopleva