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Waiting for a home of its own - Public health college ready for new facility
Iowa City Press Citizen - November 08, 2007
By Brian Morelli
For years, University of Iowa epidemiology professor Charles Lynch has battled space and time constraints while researching ways to slow one of Iowa's top killers, but Lynch sees potential that a new home base for his college will strengthen the fight against cancer.
While the UI College of Public Health reaches all 99 counties in Iowa, and its faculty, like Lynch, is working to teach the next generation of public health leaders and to solve the state's most pressing health issues, they don't have a home. They are spread across 15 buildings on and off campus.
"We have a lofty goal of preventing cancer statewide," Lynch said. "The new building will assist in some ways. If you can get people together in a given space, there is a greater possibility of collaboration."
Eight years after rising out of the College of Medicine and Graduate College to stand on its own, the college has the green light for a new $47.7 million academic home that will, for the first time, put its students and faculty in the same building.
"It's like if you put a portion of your staff and put them in another building and say work together," Lynch said, who along with teaching serves as the medical director for the Iowa Cancer Registry.
The registry is one of the college's 27 institutes and centers that range in focus from cancer to aging to tobacco to infectious disease control. Because of the general interest and application of many of the college's research areas, the college is largely grant-funded.
"You can't pick up a newspaper without some reference to public health, AIDS, (Hurricane) Katrina, SARS, influenza," said the college's dean, James Merchant.
Merchant estimates that faculty generates about $540,000 each annually in research funding, which accounts for about 80 percent of the college's budget.
Merchant, who has been dean since the college's inception, said the college was born out of the recognition that greater emphasis on public health was necessary.
"At the time, it was recognized we had a real lack of people trained at the local level in public health and a lot of preventable health outcomes in most rural and urban counties," Merchant said, noting trends in cervical cancer, rural motor vehicle fatalities and adverse neo-natal outcomes.
Merchant said he thinks the new facility will increase research grant dollars because there will be more faculty and more opportunities for collaboration.
Merchant hopes that the new facility helps the college continue its growth. He wants to grow the student body, which is made up entirely of graduate students, from 327 to more than 500 and faculty from 69 to about 125.
While Merchant helped build support for the new building, he will be retired by the time it opens.
Construction of the 130,000-square-foot facility is expected to begin in spring 2008, with completion in the summer of 2010. It will be located at the site where the former International Center stands.
Steve Ummel graduated from UI in 1965 with a master's degree in hospital and health administration, which is now called the master's degree in health management and policy. Ummel serves as chairman of the college's board of advisors.
Ummel said the facility will help in attracting grants, educating students and speeding up the gap between research and dissemination of knowledge.
"This has to give exposure to graduate students. It is a richer, more diverse learning experience than when I was in the department of hospital administration in the '60s," Ummel said.
This project's budget, and ultimately the project as a whole, was given final approval by the Iowa state Board of Regents in September. That came on the heels of a naming controversy that attracted possibly the most attention the college has ever received.
The college and the insurance giant Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield had neared a deal that would have renamed the college after Wellmark and at the same time would have wrapped up a $15 million fundraising drive.
Some thought it was inappropriate for the college to bear a corporate name. However, that money would have been used for a variety of programming needs and satisfied the $6 million the college is expected to raise for the new building. Now the college is about $3 million short. Merchant said by backing away from the naming deal, it could actually help the fundraising cause.
"We have a lot of money to raise," Merchant said. "(But) I think there is a lot of positive sentiment for the college. A lot more people know about the College of Public Health after the publicity."
The most significant chunk of the money, $20.7 million, came from state money. Sen. Robert Dvorsky, D-Coralville, who leads the Senate appropriation committee, played a key role in building support in the Legislature. He said its reach across the state played a key role in its funding.
"I think it is really significant and important to the state of Iowa," Dvorsky said. "They have this broad network across the state, working with a lot groups you wouldn't really know about. This allows them to broaden their reach."