WSU sees big future in Spokane- Research is Key

Branch campus to target health sciences, boost graduate programs

Washington State University’s Spokane campus is expected to become vastly more important in the WSU constellation in the near future, offering many more graduate-level and research programs and leading a new push into human-health sciences, school officials say.

By Addy Hatch Spokane Journal of Business

The changes, which are to include creating new academic programs here and transferring some programs to Spokane from Pullman, will help WSU-Spokane snag more research funds from government and industry sources and will complement efforts to turn Spokane into a major biomedical center, says Rom Markin, interim dean of WSU-Spokane.

“WSU-Spokane is going to be a very significant player in the things that WSU sees as important to its future,” he says.

It’ll happen quickly, too, he adds: “You will notice a marked difference in WSU-Spokane in five years, a dramatic difference in 10.”

WSU-Spokane’s transformation is expected to start soon with the probable appointment of a vice-provost for health sciences, a new position at the university that would be based in Spokane, says Lane Rawlins, president of WSU. That person also would serve as head of the WSU-Spokane campus, a position that is expected to be elevated soon from dean to chancellor, along with the deans of other WSU branch campuses in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, Wash. WSU-Spokane’s longtime dean, Bill Gray, resigned that post in January.

“We feel it may make sense to have the chief administrator for human-health affairs located in Spokane,” Rawlins says. “We want to put more emphasis on medically related, particularly human medicine, programs there.”

While Rawlins and Markin for the most part decline to elaborate in detail about programs that could be added in Spokane, Markin says the university seriously is considering creating here a doctoral program in professional health sciences, which WSU currently doesn’t offer. Such a program would target people who want to “manage health-sciences delivery systems,” he says. The school also could add a doctoral program in audiology, he says.

Other health-sciences programs under consideration would address the most pressing health issues of the day, such as cardiac medicine, diabetes, obesity, and addiction, Markin says.

“I think there will be rather significant programs developed … relating to all of those areas,” he says.

WSU-Spokane envisions working with Spokane’s large health-care industry to offer such programs, because practitioners here have interest in and experience with those areas of medicine, and because those areas of medicine are growing, Markin says. What’s more, Spokane’s medical community would provide “fertile fields of investigation” for clinical research trials emanating from WSU-Spokane, he says.

The presence of the large health-care infrastructure here is one reason WSU is targeting WSU-Spokane rather than its other campuses for expansion of its health-sciences programs, he says. Another is the lack of such programs here already.

“We have an excellent branch campus in Vancouver, perhaps the one branch that will move to four-year status more rapidly than the other two. Why don’t they go the health-science route?” Markin asks. “Because Portland is just across the river, and Portland already has the Oregon Health Sciences system there. That’s why Vancouver won’t be moving into that (health-sciences) area, but it’s clearly why WSU-Spokane will, because it’s an open market here.”

He adds that WSU-Spokane should be able to attract more federal and industry funding to support research here.

Currently, a little more than 25 percent of WSU-Spokane’s $15 million total annual budget comes from external sources, such as government and industry grants, Markin says. He hopes the campus can bump that percentage up to half of its budget in the future, although, he says, “that’s pretty optimistic.”

WSU’s new human-health-sciences programs, however, aren’t paving the way to the creation of a second medical school in the state—at least, not yet, Rawlins says. The idea of adding an additional medical school in the Northwest—possibly in Spokane—has been the subject of rumor for years.

“We’ve got our hands full right now,” he says. “There are not plans to proceed with (a medical school) in the immediate future.”

Research is key

Rawlins and Markin say WSU-Spokane in the future will target graduate-level and doctoral education and research specifically.

“We’re looking at a very high-level operation,” Rawlins says.

As such, he doesn’t expect the Spokane campus’s enrollment to balloon, although the campus’s facilities will grow because post-baccalaureate studies and research frequently are “very space-intensive” operations, he says.

Markin says the focus on research here will benefit the Spokane area’s economy because it will help expand the biomedical industry here, which is a prime goal of business leaders. Furthermore, WSU-Spokane expects to play a major role in the proposed development of a medical-research institute here, Rawlins says.

Both Rawlins and Markin stress that WSU-Spokane doesn’t want to duplicate programs already offered here, and will try hard not to step on the toes of other colleges and universities.

“Resources are short in this state,” Rawlins says. “We don’t need to be trying to do what somebody else is already doing.”

What’s more, the expansion of research programs in Spokane shouldn’t be detrimental to the school’s main campus in Pullman, they say, because WSU envisions the two campuses working together closely.

Some of the programs that will be added in Spokane, for example, could replicate the model of WSU’s doctor of pharmacy program, in which students take their first two years of instruction in Pullman and the last two in Spokane, Markin says.

Rawlins says he’s looking at the changes to WSU-Spokane as a “co-location” of the school’s research programs, which he considers key to the entire school’s future.

“We can’t do what we want to do or be what we want to be without advancing our research programs,” he says.

Other programs here, too

WSU-Spokane won’t concentrate solely on human-health sciences.

The school likely also will expand its design programs already located here—interior design, architecture, and landscape architecture—by offering a doctoral degree in design, Markin says.

WSU also is looking at offering courses in Spokane through its highly regarded hotel and restaurant administration program, he says.

“We’ll have the Pullman program, and we’ll have a Spokane derivative of that,” he says. “We can do that without a great deal of additional cost,” Markin says, noting that some members of the hospitality industry here have asked the school to expand its program to Spokane.

http://spokanejournal.com/spokane_id=article&sub=1515