Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2004 | 9:42 a.m.
Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers wants Nevada's two universities to put an end to their north-south divide by partnering in an effort to expand the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Las Vegas.
The University of Nevada, Reno currently has sole control over the state medical school, but the school has offices in the Las Vegas Valley and trains many of its residents in Southern Nevada hospitals such as University Medical Center. Students spend their first two years of medical school doing classroom work in Reno and then their last two years doing clinical work in Reno or in Las Vegas, where most of the state's population resides.
The state cannot afford, nor does it need, two medical schools, Rogers said in a memo sent out to the Board of Regents Tuesday. But at the same time, Rogers said UNR needs to increase the medical school's presence and offerings in Southern Nevada.
The ideal way to do that, Rogers said, is for UNR to partner with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, allowing both universities to utilize their strengths and expand their offerings in the medical sciences to better meet the health care needs of the entire state.
Rogers bases his proposal on a partnership developed between the University of Arizona Medical School in Tucson and Arizona State University in Phoenix this past year. The Arizona Board of Regents approved the partnership in August in an effort to meet many of the same challenges Nevada is facing, said Rogers, an alumnus of the University of Arizona School of Law.
The Arizona agreement, Rogers said, ended a 37-year-dispute between the two universities. It allows the medical school to expand in the most cost-effective way possible, and it allows both universities to exhance their health science offerings and collaborate more on research.
As in Nevada, the medical school there was founded at the older, land granted University of Arizona in Tucson, but most of the state's population growth has been in the more urban Phoenix where Arizona State University is based.
The Arizona plan envisions the development of the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, an academic medical center that would foster research collaboration between both universities. Rogers' said he would like to see a joint partnership between UNLV and UNR help bring the the long-talked-about academic medical center planned for Las Vegas to fruition.
Rogers said the plan would also work well with a deal he said he has in the works for a major private-public partnership to expand the medical school. Rogers said he cannot yet release any details on what that possible partnership involves because the donors want it to remain private until the details are worked out.
The Arizona plan also includes bringing the basic medical science classes now only offered in Tucson to Phoenix, with professors holding dual faculty positions at both universities. If Nevada adopted a similar plan, students would be able to complete their medical school degrees in one place.
Rogers said he just wants the presidents of both universities and the Board of Regents to consider the larger concept.
"I don't know how it will all work mechanically," Rogers said. "We don't want to get ahead of ourselves in what we are doing. The devil is in the details and in a project like this there are a lot of details.
"It may take years to put together, but it's good to see a prototype being developed in Arizona. All I am asking is that everyone take a good, complete analytical look at it."
Cindy Pollard, UNR spokeswoman, said President John Lilley and medical school dean Dr. John McDonald are doing just that -- reviewing the chancellor's suggestion, the Arizona plan and fashioning a response. She could not say what their initial reaction was to the proposal, and neither man was available for comment on Tuesday.
UNLV President Carol Harter said her health sciences staff was also fashioning a response, but that their reaction was predominantly positive.
"I think the model for the partnership they have created in Arizona would serve us very well in Nevada," Harter said, adding that a partnership would benefit the citizens of the state, the students and the research efforts of both universities.
"It just makes perfectly good sense to me."
Harter said providing the initial medical school classes in Las Vegas as well as in Reno would help keep more students in the state, as some find it difficult to move from Reno to Las Vegas mid-degree. She also said she thought the partnership was the most economical way to meet Southern Nevada's needs of being more involved with the state medical school.
The joint collaboration on medical and biomedical research will also bring more research dollars into the state and help UNLV reach its goal of becoming a research-intensive university, Harter said.
"We're developing the School of Public Health, the joint pharmacy program (a partnership with UNR), the School of Dental Medicine -- which all lead to enhanced research capability and dollars at UNLV," Harter said. "I think a partnership with the medical school will drive it even farther."
Regent Mark Alden, who sent a memo to the Board of Regents earlier on Tuesday praising the chancellor's efforts and asking regents to support Rogers, said the collaboration of the two universities was key to meeting the health needs of the state. He said he supports a joint academic medical center where both universities would have space and would develop research together.
Alden said the two universities needed to stop building "separate turf" and realize "we're all on the same turf together."
Several other regents agreed.
"If we can work out all the details, I think it's ideal," Regent Howard Rosenberg, a UNR professor, said. "It satisfies UNR's ideas of a land grant university, of reaching out to the needs of the state, and it gives UNLV a point of entry on something that they need to be involved with."
Alden's memo is the first of several, he said. Following in the chancellor's footsteps, Alden said he plans to address several policy issues facing the board in the coming weeks.
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