U-M, GVSU pharmacy partnership expected to lead to more collaboration between universities
By Dave Murray, Grand Rapids Press
GRAND RAPIDS -- When Thomas Haas took the president's job at Grand Valley State University three years ago, he thought there must be ways his new school could team up with his alma mater across the state.
On Thursday, Haas sat down with University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman and their provosts with much fanfare to sign a deal that creates opportunities for pharmacy students - but sets the stage for many others.
"It just makes sense that we would be mutually supportive of one another," Haas told members of Michigan's Board of Regents during a Thursday meeting, the first for the body in Grand Rapids since 1998.
Grand Valley State University President Thomas J. Haas signs an agreement as University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman watches. Joining them at the signing ceremony at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, from left, Frank Ascione, U-M dean of college of pharmacy, Teresa A. Sullivan, U-M provost and executive vice president, and far right, Gayle Davis, GVSU provost and vice president for academic affairs.
Rex Larsen | The Grand Rapids Press
"We're thrilled to have the collaboration that we are agreeing to today, and I know that there will be more on the way."
The universities signed off on a plan that would allow Grand Valley undergraduate students to have preferred admission to University of Michigan's doctoral pharmacy program.
The plan sets aside up to eight slots for GVSU students in the program, which receives about 500 applications each year for 80 openings.
Coleman said earlier the Grand Valley partnership is the first for the doctoral pharmacy program, and Grand Valley was selected because she "thinks the world" of the school.
Haas, who earned a master's in chemistry and another in environmental health sciences at U-M, said the new partnership is one of four ways the two schools are working together.
A deal signed last year allowed Michigan kinesiology students to enter Grand Valley's master's degree program in occupational therapy.
The two schools also work together through a federal grant for alternative energy projects. And Grand Valley works with the Gerald R. Ford Library, which is based in Ann Arbor at the university, in addition to the presidential museum in Grand Rapids.
In other business, regents learned their university will house a new, statewide Michigan College Advising Corps, a group aimed at increasing the number of low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students going to college.
The group will train recent Michigan graduates to work full-time for up to two years as college advisers in underserved high schools throughout Michigan, including Grand Rapids.
Advisers are to work with principals, counselors and teachers to encourage students and help match teens and their college choices.
During the first year, eight full-time advisers will be placed at high schools in up to eight state cities including Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, Jackson, Muskegon, Pontiac and Grand Rapids. The program could expand to 12 community schools in the 2011-2012 school year, and 16 in 2012-2013 and beyond.
E-mail Dave Murray: dmurray@grpress.com.