Born in Portland, he graduated from Reed College and the University of
Oregon Medical School (now OHSU School of Medicine), completed residency training in internal medicine and cardiology at the medical school and affiliated veterans’ hospital in Portland, and was a senior research fellow in the cardiovascular division of the University of Utah College of Medicine. He joined the clinical faculty of the University of Oregon Medical School in 1962, and moved up the ranks to become professor of medicine. In 1975 he was appointed vice president and director of hospitals and clinics in the newly organized OHSU, positions he held for a decade. He was appointed executive dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine in 1986, and later
was named vice president and director of the Division of Medical School Standards and Assessment at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington, D.C., where he served for eleven years. During that time, he was administrative secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the national authority for accreditation of U.S. medical schools.

He retired in 1999, making his residence on the Oregon Coast. He enjoyed classroom and bedside teaching, adopting techniques later popularized in
medical schools as “problem-based” learning, and received teaching awards from
numerous classes of graduating medical students. He used his national role in medical school accreditation to foster methods of education that were more learning and student-centered, and less teaching and faculty-driven. His bibliography cut a wide swath, changing emphasis with the shifting focus of his academic career, from basic physiology and pharmacology, to clinical cardiology, and later to aspects of teaching, learning and educational quality assessment in medical schools.

In the 1990’s he assisted in modernizing medical education programs and establishing educational quality standards in a number of foreign countries, including the Republic of Georgia, Czech Republic, Poland, Switzerland, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina. He was recognized by the Mexican Association of Faculties and Schools of Medicine for his extraordinary help establishing a program of medical school accreditation in Mexico. He was honored with the award of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Karol Marcinkowski University of Medical Sciences in Poznan for services to medical education in Poland.

Classical music was his passion. He never ceased trying to better his own piano skills; and his travels often were arranged to coincide with recitals, ballet and concert performances. He was a connoisseur of good food and wine, and an inventive cook. He enjoyed coastal gardening at his Salishan Hills home overlooking the ocean.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Arnold F. and Isabell (Booth)
Kassebaum. Hefs s’urvived by his sister, Joyce (Mrs. Wallace) Bischoff;
Nephews, Michael and Brian Bischoff and Niece, Karen Brugato.

No services. Memorial contributions can be made to Doctors Without Borders USA, INC., New York, NY.

Arrangements by Riverview Abbey Funeral Home