It’s been 10 years since Gonzaga University President Thayne McCulloh and University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce first met. That meeting led to several other meetings and an eventual health education partnership between their two institutions.
Both presidents are retiring this summer. Yesterday in Spokane, they met one more time and then talked their accomplishments with SPR’s Doug Nadvornick.
The University of Washington has taught medical students in Spokane since 2008. For seven years, its partner was Washington State University. When WSU decided in 2015 to strike out on its own with medical education, the UW went looking for another partner. The next year, Ana Mari Cauce and Thayne McCulloh announced the UW would send its med students to Gonzaga.
“In this time period, we've graduated 600 UW Medicine grads, and, you know, well over 50%, almost 60% of them have stayed right here in-state, and in fact, right now, between this partnership and our residency programs, we have 553 physicians practicing in eastern Washington. So that, which is really what a big part of what it's all about, we have had that kind of success, and that is incredibly important," Cauce said.
Initially, the medical students’ home was a tall, round building on the Gonzaga campus that was once an art museum. It was an odd fit. The two universities eventually designed and, with millions in private donations, built a state-of-the-art facility at the south end of campus. Cauce says it has helped the UW School of Medicine attract more students to Spokane.
“It used to be that if they ended up being in eastern Washington, they were WWAMI'ed. Now it's a first choice because of what a wonderful environment we have here, and the same thing in terms of the faculty and the staff. You know, we have such deeply shared values."
"We really believe as a public university that we have the strong public mission to serve. A Catholic university has that strong mission to serve, and so even though at times we're seen as very different universities, we share values both in terms of our mission, but also in terms of a real focus on making sure that the student experience is really good, and this has enhanced that," she said.
Thayne McCulloh says, when the UW presented the partnership idea, he did some crowd sourcing in the community.
“From the very beginning there was a tremendous amount of support for this partnership and for the idea that we could do something really special here, and that has continued. The support from the community, the support from doctors who are in practice, from the hospitals, has continued and remained very strong, and I think that's also what kind of inspires us about sort of taking a moment to recognize that we may be moving on this summer, but the needs that really gave birth to this particular partnership are, if anything, going to continue to grow," he said.
For the University of Washington, the partnership has allowed it to grow deeper roots in Spokane and embed itself as a full partner in the city’s health care-focused University District.
Gonzaga has enjoyed a similar benefit. The association with one of the nation’s best-known medical schools has helped it to grow its academic reputation and its health sciences offerings.
“As compared with the University of Washington, we're a much smaller university, but we also feel that the contributions that we're trying to make are important, and we want to try to make it clear to people that the only way that this is going to work effectively is if we do it together. So this partnership has actually been a really important expression of that, and I hope as a result that Gonzaga enjoys a stronger reputation and is seen as a significant contributing member to the welfare of the entire community," McCulloh said.
Ana Mari Cauce points to the health partnership’s financial impact as one other tangible benefit.
“They had estimated that it would be about an $80 million economic impact, and that seemed ambitious, and we've gone higher than that. I think to echo what Thayne just said, these are all group endeavors, and the best thing that presidents can do is hire well and partner well, and I think that we've succeeded on that, and you can really see it. I mean, the staff and the faculty at Duke is amazing, and like I say, as we've both said, it's about serving the community, and part of that is by the economic vitality," she said.
University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce will leave her post August 1. Thayne McCulloh will transition out of the Gonzaga presidency in July.
