Steven O’Day tells a story about how in 2017, while considering the role of president of Austin College, he and his wife Cece slipped into town on an unscheduled, anonymous visit. They walked the tree-lined mall of Austin College, surveyed the athletic fields, and took in the campus that is rooted in the heart of Sherman.
He says that in those moments he was sure this could be their place, and he was sure this place, with all its history, could be more. In his inauguration speech the following spring, he asked, “What’s next?”
Many additions and improvements have come over the years, including the restoration of two chapels, new athletic programs, new apartment-style student housing, upgrades and renovations to virtually all the athletic facilities, restoration of the theatre and the creation of a new indoor learning commons, and the modernization of traditional residence halls. Most recently, the stunning renewal of the campus grounds with the addition of native plants, dry stream beds and park-like gathering places has created The Austin College Commons, a beautiful outdoor space for students to gather. There have been significant advances to the curriculum, too, with the addition of a Bachelor of Science degree, many new majors and minors that speak to the needs of today’s student, and now, a new post-graduate degree that could affect the entire Texoma region.
President O’Day and Austin College are proud to announce the launch of the Master of Medical Science – Physician Assistant (PA) program. It is what’s next!
PAs practice medicine in every specialty and healthcare setting. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 12,200 job openings for PAs each year over the next decade. In the United States, there are only 306 accredited PA programs, 14 of which are in Texas—now including Austin College.
Dr. Diana Noller, founding director of the new program and Associate Professor of Medical Science, says, “There is a healthcare shortage today, and with the growing population in the region, that shortage is expected to worsen in the coming years.”
The Texas Medical Association reports that Texas is well below the national average of 246 physicians per 100,000 people with only 204.6 patient care physicians per 100,000.
One solution is to graduate more homegrown doctors. Since 2016, six new medical schools launched in the state, and this year, The University of Texas at Tyler School of Medicine will make a total of 16. That’s good news for Texans, but it takes years of medical school to become a doctor.
Another solution is to train PAs, who, in just two years of post-graduate study, are licensed to diagnose, treat, and follow up with patients while working with a supervising physician.
“I believe adding this program at this time is an illustration of Austin College’s responsiveness to a very real and immediate need,” O’Day said. “We are going to rise to the moment in the community, the region, and the country. Healthcare needs to be addressed, and we as an institution have embraced that.”
This year, Austin College marks its 175th academic year. Dating back to 1849, the college has made many strategic adjustments—sometimes to innovate, occasionally to survive. As the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under its original name and charter, Austin College has endured pandemics and wars, and has expanded its student body with co-education in 1918 and desegregation in 1959. Doing “what’s next” has kept the campus and curriculum relevant and thriving.
The new Master of Medical Science degree is not the first post-graduate degree offered by Austin College, but it is the first in a long time. Since 1972, the college has educated hundreds of certified teachers for Texas through the Austin Teacher Program that allows students to complete both a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of the Art of Teaching degree in only five years.
Like the original founders setting out to educate Texans on the prairie, O’Day’s plan to launch a program of this magnitude required a measure of faith. He and Dr. Elizabeth Gill, Vice President for Academic Affairs, along with others began building key relationships in the medical community and collecting data to support the need. Once the idea was supported by data, the proposal went to the Austin College Board of Trustees. In May 2021, the Board unanimously endorsed the plan to proceed.
Recalling that pivotal vote, O’Day said, “A moment before the confirmation, one of our physicians on the Board raised his hand and said, ‘This is not something Austin College should do.’ Then he paused…and added, ‘This is something Austin College has to do.’ That was an important moment because it required an initial investment by the institution to build it. And, to some extent it was an ‘if you build it, they will come’ moment.”
A new PA program must be poised for operation before even applying for provisional accreditation. In other words, the institution must be all in with no guarantee of approval: facilities secured, director hired, curriculum developed, clinical sites confirmed, and financial support in place. After Board approval in May 2021, the work began to find the people who would say ‘yes’ to this dream.
Dr. Noller attributes the commitment of the faculty and staff to their hearts to serve others. “We recognize that the community needs better access to healthcare…we value being a part of the solution.”
To house this new PA program, Austin College took possession of 13,000 square feet in the former Cigna building adjacent to Texoma Medical Center in Denison. Significant gifts totaling more than $1.25 million are behind the renovation of the satellite space known as the Austin College Health Campus. Generous benefactors with longstanding ties to the College granted the funds: the Hillcrest Foundation, Texoma Health Foundation, Clara Blackford Smith and W. Aubrey Smith Charitable Foundation, and M.B. and Edna Zale Foundation, and individual donors whose generosity has supported start-up costs for the new program.
The former office space has been transformed into a state-of-the-art facility that includes classrooms, faculty offices, and practicum spaces with exam tables. To foster collaboration and camaraderie, there are lounge spaces with natural light, a full kitchen, and a break area.
The program is open to 34 students in each cohort who complete 13 months of classroom training and 11 months of clinical training. Each student has 10 rotations through outpatient, inpatient, emergency department, and operating room settings. Students learn to care for patients across the lifespan from infants to elderly in various medical specialties. There are seven core rotations and three elective rotations.
The Austin College PA team has over one hundred medical partners for these rotations including preceptors and clinical sites—with Texoma Medical Center being an early and enthusiastic partner. Other affiliations include Medical City, Baylor, Scott & White, and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The preceptors, who are approved medical professionals willing to host and train students, come from a variety of medical settings from private practice, clinics and hospitals and must meet certain requirements to contract with the College.
“The culture of medicine instills that we give back and train the next generation,” Dr. Noller said. “However, it has become more and more difficult to find clinical preceptors in recent years due to professional demands. I am a strong advocate for PAs training their own, however nationwide currently 70 percent of PA student preceptors are physicians. We appreciate those physicians tremendously, but the PA profession needs to mature into one that takes primary responsibility for training the next generation of PAs.”
She says that based on the numbers from the National Commission on the Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) there are fewer than 10 certified PAs in Grayson County. Austin College is hoping to change that. “We’re really looking to draw our own cadre of graduate certified PAs who will practice for a few years and then serve as preceptors for future Austin College PA students,” she said.
The two-tier accreditation from Accreditation Review Commission on the Education of Physician Assistants (ARC-PA) and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges was completed in October. The program achieved Accreditation-Provisional from the ARC-PA and will welcome its first cohort of students in June 2024.
The application portal opened in April 2023, months before the official accreditation, and to no one’s surprise more than 1,100 have applied for the 34 spots. Gaining a seat in any PA program is highly competitive as so few are available, and the training is rigorous.
“We’re getting applications from all over the country, as far away as Washington State and the East coast, and of course from all over Texas and other southern states,” Noller said. “We will be bringing students to the area who will need housing, food, and other resources. Once there are two cohorts enrolled, we will have 68 PA students each year, which will certainly have an impact on the local economy.”
Of the 306 programs nationwide, the characteristics that make the undergraduate experience at Austin College special will help set apart the Austin College PA program as well. The low student-to-faculty ratio with faculty offices down the hall from the classrooms will create a close-knit community. “Our values of excellence, introspection, accountability, and engagement are very important to us,” she said. “And the way we live those out in everyday practice is unique. We also have thought about how to be inclusive of others and incorporate universal design into our curriculum which means we are building it to be accessible to the greatest number of people to the greatest extent possible. That is not commonly found in PA education.”
One way the program has been thoughtful about inclusion and universal design is to provide a variety of ways to interact with anatomy including virtual dissection tables and mixed reality lenses for holographic study of the human body.
“Every single person at Austin College, every professor, every coach, every mentor, advisor, and administrator, every single one of us wants students to succeed,” says O’Day. “That’s what sets us apart—every single one of us cares and that’s the difference. So, it is the exact same thing here with the PA program. Each year, we will welcome 34 new PA students to a world-class facility and faculty that cares. We are committed to their success.”
“I would love for historians to look back on this and recognize this was a moment of renaissance for Austin College,” O’Day says. “Because this was a period where we were bold, we dug in and took some chances. I think they will say we were confident and wise in our approach. We went for it, and we were right.”
Learn more at https://www.austincollege.edu/