New Medical College Effect Will Be Significant

The proposed new Medical College of Wisconsin campus in Wausau could have a significant impact on otherhigher education facilities in the region.

The announcement of the new Medical College campus is welcomed by Bernie Patterson, Chancellor of UW Stevens Point, who says the two schools are already working on joint research projects.

“There’s a big research component at the Medical College, as there is here,and in fact we’ve already sent practically a busload of faculty and staff to Milwaukee to meet with their faculty and staff to begin the collaboration two months ago,” he says.

The new campus will also affect the curriculum at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau.President Lori Weyers says there will be hands on opportunities for the medical students withher school’s health sciences and public safety programs.

“We will be able to simulate a natural disaster and be able to bring the medical students in with our students, paramedics, EMT’s, our nurses, our search techs, that if it would ever happen in real life, they would be prepared to handle it,” she says.

Dr. Brian Ewert, President and CEO of the Marshfield Clinic, sees a win-win, with the new medical students learning at the clinic, and then practicing medicine in the region.

“We’ve been around since 1916 and we’ve been educating doctors for 80 of those 96 years, because we recognize that where physicians train is a strong predictor of where they will practice,” he says.

And Dr. John Raymond, President of the Medical College, says the other institutions could even have teaching space on his new campus.

“There’s the opportunity to bring in other programs, and they wouldn’t necessarily all need to be owned by the Medical College of Wisconsin,” he says.”We’re up to helping maximize those possibilities.”

The new Medical College campus is expected to open in 2015.