The State of Higher Education in Charlotte

[tarwater]

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article228276849.html

Short op-ed from Dubois saying a medical school in Charlotte just ain't happening. 

[Scribe]

38 minutes ago, tarwater said:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article228276849.html

Short op-ed from Dubois saying a medical school in Charlotte just ain't happening. 

How about a law school then!??!

[CLT2014]

He makes a great point that attracting physicians to a metro area is more likely to happen after residency programs. Making more slots available at Charlotte hospitals for residency programs will go further to attracting talent and keep that talent in the community. Most students disperse from medical school, never to return to campus, and settle down where they land their residency. 

The money for a med school could do so much more for improving the undergrad / grad STEM degrees and making UNCC a more competitive school for admissions, thus lifting the prestige of the degree. 

Edited March 22, 2019 by CLT2014

[CharlotteWkndBuzz]

And that ladies and gentlemen is what a complacent, soon to be retiring Chancellor sounds like...he's not fighting for anything anytime soon. Retire already! Need some new, ambitious blood in there!

Edited March 22, 2019 by CharlotteWkndBuzz

[tozmervo]

52 minutes ago, CharlotteWkndBuzz said:

And that ladies and gentlemen is what a complacent, soon to be retiring Chancellor sounds like...he's not fighting for anything anytime soon. Retire already! Need some new, ambitious blood in there!

Just because he's not ambitious about a medical school does not mean he isn't ambitious. Dubois has done an insane amount to advance UNCC

[cltbwimob]

52 minutes ago, tozmervo said:

Just because he's not ambitious about a medical school does not mean he isn't ambitious. Dubois has done an insane amount to advance UNCC

I think it would be more correct to say that the university has advanced considerably despite the presence of Phil Dubois as chancellor.

[CharlotteWkndBuzz]

52 minutes ago, tozmervo said:

Just because he's not ambitious about a medical school does not mean he isn't ambitious. Dubois has done an insane amount to advance UNCC

I never said he wasn't ambitious. He has done many good things to raise the profile of the university, but due to him retiring soon, he is not going to pursue something of this caliber.  I still think it is important and I believe it will happen someday, just not under Dubois. 

[kermit]

While I think a medical school here would be a big benefit to the city, I am not sure it would be very helpful to UNC Charlotte's growth as a university. The money to build and operate a medical school does not just fall from the sky. Paying for a new medical school would have the effect of reducing future capital allocations to UNCC which would limit the ability of the campus to continue to grow. There would be less money to expand things like engineering programs (which may have a greater local impact on entrepreneurship) or  more uptown offerings. This is the biggest reason why Phil hasn't pushed for one.

I am not saying a med school is a bad idea, just that it would come at a cost -- ECU is a fine example of this process.

Edited March 22, 2019 by kermit

[cltbwimob]

1 hour ago, kermit said:

While I think a medical school here would be a big benefit to the city, I am not sure it would be very helpful to UNC Charlotte's growth as a university. The money to build and operate a medical school does not just fall from the sky. Paying for a new medical school would have the effect of reducing future capital allocations to UNCC which would limit the ability of the campus to continue to grow. There would be less money to expand things like engineering programs (which may have a greater local impact on entrepreneurship) or  more uptown offerings. This is the biggest reason why Phil hasn't pushed for one.

Except there hasn’t been a major push into the Engineering Sciences in Phil’s tenure.  Since 2005, the year Phil showed up, the university has formally requested to establish 35 majors at the Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral levels.  Of those, only two were true engineering majors (a few additional majors requested in his tenure are housed in the college of engineering but are not engineering majors per se) and only one was at the graduate level.  They are currently applying for an MS in Computer Engineering but they haven’t reached the stage of a formal request.  Even accounting for the MS in Computer Engineering they have hardly made a concerted push to advance their offerings in the engineering disciplines under Phil if you ask me.  

Beyond engineering, the university has sparse offerings in research-heavy doctoral degrees in the traditional sciences-there is no PhD offered in either Physics or Chemistry.  Nor do they have PhDs in many traditional social science and business disciplines such as economics and accounting.  

If Phil had decided to raise the research profile by focusing on non-medical scientific/engineering  and  research intensive social science and business  disciplines, that would have maybe been a reason to give him a pass for not pursuing a medical school, but he hasn’t.  Instead he’s spent his 14 years dutifully playing the role of Chapel Hill vassal...Notice how the op-Ed he wrote was in conjunction with the Dean of UNC’s Medical School.  He’s put the kabosh on a medical school, a law school, a name change, and hasn’t made much effort to expand the profile of the university in other ways beyond an endless building campaign.  The best thing to ever happen to the university will be his retirement.

 

 

Edited March 22, 2019 by cltbwimob

[Spartan]

He makes a good point about the the funding of a program like that. UNC Charlotte is a large university, but it isn't a major research institution yet, and it lacks the resources of more established research institutions. It feels like there needs to be more groundwork laid to grow the research component of the university before expansion into a medical school. 

[Desert Power]

On 3/22/2019 at 3:38 PM, tozmervo said:

Just because he's not ambitious about a medical school does not mean he isn't ambitious. Dubois has done an insane amount to advance UNCC

Getting light rail to campus and establishing the uptown building for business school are both big items for UNCC.  Growing some of the type of programs talked about here will require more and wealthier alum to fund them.  Increasing the visibility and population of the university is an important first step.

[SgtCampsalot]

1 hour ago, Desert Power said:

Getting light rail to campus and establishing the uptown building for business school are both big items for UNCC.  Growing some of the type of programs talked about here will require more and wealthier alum to fund them.  Increasing the visibility and population of the university is an important first step.

That reminds me, anyone know the likelihood that UNCC would expand their Uptown campus with another building? While I don't want it to turn into an "Institutional Ward", I do kind of love it having a presence there.

[kermit]

4 minutes ago, SgtCampsalot said:

That reminds me, anyone know the likelihood that UNCC would expand their Uptown campus with another building? While I don't want it to turn into an "Institutional Ward", I do kind of love it having a presence there.

Very likely. Major donors have already been lined up so it will be sooner rather than later.

 

 

[Desert Power]

2 hours ago, SgtCampsalot said:

That reminds me, anyone know the likelihood that UNCC would expand their Uptown campus with another building? While I don't want it to turn into an "Institutional Ward", I do kind of love it having a presence there.

A bit better than it being a ward of empty lots.  They were building some type of stage on one of Levine's empty lots today, but I didn't get pictures.

[pathb]

This is exciting:

https://www.wfae.org/post/atrium-wake-forest-plan-charlottes-first-four-year-medical-school

Quote

 

Atrium Health and Wake Forest University announced Wednesday that they plan to open a new medical school in Charlotte, the city's first in more than 100 years. 

...

There are five medical schools in North Carolina — they are located in Chapel Hill, Durham, Greenville and Winston-Salem, and a school of osteopathic medicine at Campbell University in Harnett County.

Charlotte is the largest metro area in the country without a medical school.

Anyone have thoughts on potential locations?  Doesn't Wake Forest have some space on College St. Uptown currently?  

[Desert Power]

58 minutes ago, pathb said:

This is exciting:

https://www.wfae.org/post/atrium-wake-forest-plan-charlottes-first-four-year-medical-school

Anyone have thoughts on potential locations?  Doesn't Wake Forest have some space on College St. Uptown currently?  

Would be great to take some of Levine land near UNCC, but my guess it will be somewhere colocated  with CMC

[KJHburg]

I think as well it will be near the main campus but could be uptown.  Wake Forest School of Medicine is not located right at Baptist Hospital  in Winston so off site is doable.   It would be nice to locate in First Ward somewhere but land costs maybe prohibitive.  

[Desert Power]

2 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

I think as well it will be near the main campus but could be uptown.  Wake Forest School of Medicine is not located right at Baptist Hospital  in Winston so off site is doable.   It would be nice to locate in First Ward somewhere but land costs maybe prohibitive.  

Good point.  And being in first ward gives you connectivity to the CMC campus on WT  Harris and UNCC.  I wonder if they would want some type of combined facility for their business and medical programs...

[DMann]

How about 2nd Ward instead of Brooklyn Village?  Good access to both hospitals.

 

Edited April 11, 2019 by DMann

[sparkytheincredible]

40 minutes ago, KJHburg said:

I think as well it will be near the main campus but could be uptown.  Wake Forest School of Medicine is not located right at Baptist Hospital  in Winston so off site is doable.   It would be nice to locate in First Ward somewhere but land costs maybe prohibitive.  

[Said with complete naivete] Would this not be a potential use for the Hal Marshall blocks?

[KJHburg]

15 minutes ago, sparkytheincredible said:

[Said with complete naivete] Would this not be a potential use for the Hal Marshall blocks?

This could really jump start N Tryon corridor and be the anchor the Hal Marshall site.

[kermit]

I would be surprised if it ended up anywhere other than adjacent to CMC main. However it would be a fantastic anchor for the innovation corridor (N of Optimist Hall) that was in the N Tryon vision plan if Wake was in the mood for urban trailblazing (they did have some success w the WS Innovation Quarter)

[RiverwoodCLT]

I think the UNC  System would not help UNCC  have a School of Medicine l  and they did in would be 30 to 50 years from now.

What we have now will be better that just waiting for the UNC  System to move on a School of Medicine .

[KJHburg]

I could see the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Charlotte growing even larger than than their Winston location in the long run.   According that WS Journal article I saw it could be a total of 3000 students.   By the time UNC system thinks about it this school will be so established it won't happen.  Oh well Wake Forest is a top notch medical school. 

""The systems said the Charlotte medical school could educate nearly 3,200 students — including medical students, residents and fellows — across more than 100 specialized training programs each year.""

 

[CLT>]

It could always go to the Mercy Site, that is underutilized as far as Charlotte Atrium Campuses go.

If they were to keep it on the main campus, the Medical Center Plaza Deck  (between Blythe Boulevard & Romany Road)is a good candidate for a classroom building going vertical.

But the last time there was talk of a medical school it was to be in the area between East Boulevard, Scott Avenue, Kings Drive, and the main CMC campus. Atrium owns a lot (but not all) of those homes there and could have a nice urban frontage on East Boulevard.

here's a 2007 Article about the land assemblage for 'medical uses'

https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2007/11/05/story4.html