New board takes first steps for UAMS satellite campus
Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has spent the past three months building an advisory board to help with its plans for a satellite campus in the state’s northwest corner.
The fledgling board has 12 members so far and might eventually add one or two more positions, Dr. Peter Kohler, vice chancellor for UAMS-Northwest, said Wednesday. The 12 live or work in Washington and Benton counties and come from the health-care, education and business fields. Officials are looking for another Benton County representative and possibly for an “at-large” representative from outside Northwest Arkansas, Kohler said, someone who recognizes the satellite’s statewide benefits. “We’re trying to be all-inclusive,” he said. The advisers who’ve been assembled thus far met May 7 and July 14 to handle initial steps such as devising bylaws, he said. The group plans a third meeting Sept. 11. The medical school campus and its hospital, UAMS Medical Center, are in Little Rock. In 2006, UAMS announced plans for a satellite campus to address a predicted shortage of health professionals in Arkansas.
One concern it cited was that baby boomer health-care professionals — the oldest turned 60 that year — are reaching retirement age at a time when that generation is expected to place unprecedented demands on the health-care system.
The UAMS campus in Little Rock and UAMS programs around the state that host clinical education for students and resident physicians are not able to accommodate enough new students, Kohler said.
The satellite will set up shop at the former Washington Regional Medical Center campus. It will have between 250 and 300 students in programs such as medical, pharmacy, nursing and allied health programs, along with resident physicians, when full enrollment is reached.
Leslie Taylor, a UAMS spokesman, said the northwest advisory board won’t set academic or fundraising policies, which are the purview of the UA board of trustees and the UAMS Foundation Fund Board. Instead, the new panel will help with support.
Dr. Morriss Henry, a Fayetteville ophthalmologist, has been elected board chairman.
Other members are: Mary Beth Brooks, president of the Bank of Fayetteville Dr. Joel D. Carver, a Fayetteville cardiologist Carl Collier, a pharmacist with Collier Drug Stores Inc. in Fayetteville Linda Dillman, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for benefits and risk management in Rogers Lewis Epley, a retired lawyer from Fayetteville and a former University of Arkansas System trustee Kathleen Fogarty, director of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Fayetteville Reed Greenwood, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Ann Rosso, Fayetteville, who has served on the Fayetteville Community Foundation directors board Archie Schaffer, senior vice president of external public relations, Tyson Foods Inc. in Springdale Dick Trammel, executive vice president, Arvest Bank in Rogers Fred Vorsanger, manager of Bud Walton Arena and vice president emeritus of finance and administration at UA-Fayetteville.
“Their associations, both regional and statewide, will be important,” Kohler said.
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