College of Medicine

As the first subtle hint of cooler weather arrives, I wanted to take this opportunity to share several College of Medicine updates.

1.  The Physician Assistant program is progressing well. We have hired our initial faculty members and look forward to a mock site visit  later this month and the ARC-PA accreditation site visit Dec. 5-6. The full application for accreditation was submitted in early September and is a very complete and excellent set of documents. Our founding director, Jim Zedaker, has spent innumerable hours both meeting with faculty to ensure we had the resources and support for the program, and writing the document to reflect our unique model.

We received more than 800 applications for a program that is planned to start in August 2017 with a first class of 40 students, pending favorable action by the ARC-PA in March 2017. We are planning on naming the program as the School for Physician Assistant Practice under the College of Medicine. The request for that name change has been approved by the FSU Provost’s Deans Advisory Council and by the FSU Faculty Senate. The proposal will go to the FSU Board of Trustees at the end of this month.

2. The Interdisciplinary Medical Science (IMS) program launched this semester with more than 100 students signing up for this new FSU undergraduate major. We have received great support from FSU Provost Sally McRorie to develop this program, and have created a new Senior Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Medical Science within the College of Medicine that will oversee all of the undergraduate teaching and advising programs for this and the college’s programs. Drs. Myra Hurt and Helen Livingston and their team have done incredible work over a very short period to get this innovative and collaborative program up and running.

We had a very successful IMS “kickoff:" celebration Oct. 14 and the excitement on display for this program was contagious.

3. I recently named Dr. Dan Van Durme, Chair of Family Medicine and Rural Health, as my new Associate Dean for Clinical and Community Affairs. He is actively working on developing plans for a new FSU Primary Health practice in the local area to both provide primary care and meet our mission. He will also work with regional campuses on coordinating their local community engagements.

We are working on a new organizational chart to reflect all of these changes, and it will be out next month.

John P. Fogarty, M.D.

DeanFlorida State University College of Medicine