In my conversations this fall with alumni and community members, one question often came up: How will the proposed University of Nevada Health Sciences Center affect UNLV? With limited resources and a booming population to serve, higher education leaders are looking for ways to address Nevada's pressing health issues. The Health Sciences Center is one statewide solution being proposed. It will take advantage of the strengths of each of the state's higher education institutions by integrating health education, research, and patient services. So what is UNLV's role in this?
First, it is to be a partner with our sister institutions — especially the University of Nevada, Reno. While UNR's new president, Milton Glick, and I will remain rivals on the athletic field, we are committed to a holistic approach to enhancing the educational experiences we offer future healthcare providers. This summer we sat down with system officials to determine how to better coordinate our efforts. In August, the Board of Regents signed off on an unprecedented agreement to create a fundraising foundation for the proposed Health Sciences Center. The health sciences foundation will be jointly managed by the UNLV and UNR foundations.
Second, UNLV's role in educating future health professionals will continue to expand. As the largest university in Nevada, we have already made great strides in increasing the programs we offer, most notably in providing advanced degrees in such critical areas as public health, nursing, dental medicine, and physical therapy. This will help ensure that all institutions in Nevada will be able to fill their classes with well-qualified instructors.
At the same time, we are expanding undergraduate classes to accommodate more students and working to ensure that students who transfer from the state's community colleges transition easily into UNLV's upper-division courses.
Third, our role in advancing research will continue. The vision for the Health Sciences Center is to bring together researchers and health-care providers in a setting that will foster new medical developments and delivery of integrated health care. A conversation with the professors featured in this issue of the magazine will give you an idea of just how eager they are for the center to develop. They foresee the ways in which the center will help extend their work in the lab to real-world applications.
Finally, our role in providing much-needed services to the community cannot be understated. The UNLV School of Dental Medicine, for example, is doing much more than providing low-cost services to thousands of patients. Its students and faculty members are traveling across the state to screen students for oral cancer and are launching outreach programs to serve victims of domestic abuse. The School of Public Health has worked with state health officials to remove candy tainted with lead from store shelves. The list of public outreach programs is extensive and growing.
We hope that, as graduates and friends of UNLV, you will support our efforts to improve the educational infrastructure for health-care education.
