New center is at the forefront of biomedical education

As the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson continues to expand degree programs to help students meet the health care needs of Arizona and the nation, giving those students the support they need is critical. 

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Now the college is taking the lead again with the Comprehensive Education Center, which, in its first year of existence, is gaining a lot of attention.

Tejal M. Parikh, MD, the center’s director as well as the associate dean for admissions at the College of Medicine – Tucson, said she did a presentation in the fall at the national conference for the American Association of Medical Colleges and was bombarded with follow-up questions from other schools about the unique center. 

“That was exciting. They were all intrigued by this idea,” said Parikh, an associate professor of Family and Community Medicine.

The U of A College of Medicine – Tucson is a rarity since few medical colleges offer undergraduate degrees. So, to go on and create a center with an infrastructure of support for the programs and its students was even more of a novelty to those college administrators, she said.

Lending support 

Michael M. I. Abecassis, MD, MBA, discovered when he became dean in 2019, that the College of Medicine – Tucson had undergraduate programs in physiology (recently renamed physiology and medical sciences) and an emergency medical services major. A Bachelor of Science in Medicine launched in 2021. Abecassis wanted to make sure students in Physiology 201 and 202 – which are two of the U of A’s most popular classes and had long waiting lists at the time – had enough support.

The undergraduate programs have advisors, but Abecassis wanted strong career counseling and to ensure recruitment and then outreach once students graduate.

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“I said, if we’re going to offer these degrees, we need to offer support from A to Z,” said Abecassis, who is also a member of the BIO5 Institute.

That set the wheels in motion to create the CEC to help the nearly 2,500 students in the College of Medicine – Tucson’s three undergraduate programs through every stage of their journey. Not every undergraduate student in the college plans to go on to medical school, and the center can offer guidance on many different career paths.

“There are so many options, and the key is for students to find their purpose, their passion, and then it will lead them to the right profession,” Parikh said.

At a time when the state and nation are seeing an increased demand for all forms of health care workers, the center can be a vital component in earning a valuable degree, Parikh said. 

Filling a need

Claudia Stanescu, PhD, director of physiology and medical sciences undergraduate programs, said the CEC has made a difference in getting the word out to prospective students about its degree programs. She said she’s thrilled that the center is in the process of adding career coaching, since students often must apply more than once to postgraduate professional programs.

“What we hear from our students is that if they do not get in the first time, they need support,” said Stanescu, an associate professor in the educator scholar track and associate department chair for education for the Department of Physiology. “They need to figure out how to pivot, how to improve their application if they want to try again, or what other options they might have if they want to go in a different direction. That’s something we haven’t been able to provide as much just because of the sheer number of students in the major. We have over 1,400 students, and our academic advisors need to really focus on helping them get the degree.”

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Stanescu said the U of A has one of the largest physiology undergraduate programs in the United States.

“We try to do as much as we can for our students, and when we see a need, we try to fill it,” she said. “But there comes a point where we don’t have enough staff or enough manpower to be able to provide professional school application support and career coaching. I think the center is going to be a large benefit to our students in this area.” 

Eyes on expansion 

Next for the CEC is finding space on campus and adding additional staff while getting the word out to current students about its services. Abecassis said he is pleased that after so many years of planning, the center is in place — and just in time for a new undergraduate program that’s in the works.

The Bachelor of Science in Medical Device Technology and Development merges medicine, engineering, business and law and could launch next spring. Labor statistics show a huge shortage for biotech workers in the next decade, Abecassis said. When he floated the idea of such a program, the response was enthusiastic.

“We called a lot of biotech companies, and the reaction was, ‘We’ll take your first 1,000 graduates,’” he said. “My priority is training a workforce with a very high employment rate. There’s nothing else like this.”