UNLV dedicates health campus

Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 | 9:29 a.m.

UNLV President Carol Harter is fond of saying that her university is more than just a basketball school.

She demonstrated that again Thursday with the formal dedication of UNLV's first regional campus, a health science and biotechnology facility nestled alongside University Medical Center in the heart of Las Vegas' medical district.

The 18.2-acre site is home to the UNLV School of Dental Medicine and Biotechnology Research Center and incorporates all of the major missions of the university, Harter said, such as community outreach, advanced research, economic diversification and private-public partnerships.

Harter recently signed a private-public partnership to develop an orthodontics program at the dental school, and the biotechnology center has already developed partnerships with the Nevada Cancer Institute, Metro Police and a private functional restoration company that rehabilitates those with serious workers compensation injuries.

"These partnerships we are developing are critical to the future of biomedical research and health technology in Nevada," Harter said Thursday.

The partnerships help the university advance health care for all Nevadans and encourage economic diversification, Penny Amy, associate provost for campus development, said. The partnerships also bring vital internship opportunities to UNLV students and research opportunities to its professors.

The campus, for instance, has a $400,000 forensics laboratory designed to train law professionals in DNA analysis techniques and will offer classes for health care professionals in weapons of mass destruction and infection control, Walter Goldstein, the center's coordinator, said. The cost of the classes will allow the laboratory to be self-sufficient while promoting the development of research and business.

Most of the cost of purchasing the $14 million site and renovating the former insurance buildings into research space came from federal appropriations and other grants, Amy said. The state contributed $11.2 million toward the dental school.

The three-year-old dental school has 225 students who are already seeing low-income, Medicaid patients at the on-site clinic, Dean Patrick Ferrillo said.

The clinic can currently serve up to 120 patients at a time, officials said, and patients benefit from a state-of-the-art paperless computer records system, radiology department and simulation laboratory to help students get the hang of dental treatments before they practice on real people.

UNLV dental students also work in the community promoting oral health, both through passing out toothbrushes during school visits and through two Crackdown on Cancer vans that screen students in Clark County and rural Nevada for oral cancer, Ferrillo said.

"I think it is very important that the community understand our mission goes beyond graduating dentists to seeking advances in oral health care and treating patients and providing quality, accessible oral health care for all Nevadans," Ferrillo said.

The formal dedication brought with it visiting political leaders such as Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., but most of the praise went to state Sen. Ray Rawson, D-Las Vegas, a local dentist who made the dental school his pet project.

"It's just another milestone for a great school," Rawson said

As one of the first graduates of UNLV, Rawson said he dreamed of helping the campus grow to become a competitive, world renowned doctoral research institution. The Shadow Lane campus brings the university closer to that goal of being designated as a research intensive university, he said.

"This really brings it into reality," Rawson said.