What does a Houston choir instructor have to do with the proposed $300 million fitness science center for downtown Wichita?
A little, as it turns out.
Wichita State University President Rick Muma was in eighth grade, sitting in an elegant choir in Houston Public Schools, when his professor announced he was leaving to become a medical assistant, a new career at the time.
Muma became a PA. Il earned a master’s degree in public fitness from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, located at the Texas Medical Center, which serves as a style for the proposed medium he advocates here.
Texas Medical Center is home to more than two square miles of medical facilities working together, adding MD Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas A.
Muma, who was born in Wichita, saw the need for something similar here when he returned in 1994 as a member of WSU University.
“I was a little surprised by the lack of coordinated care in the city. . . As seen in a fitness science center. . . I have the idea that why don’t we work more together, why don’t we mix?Our efforts not only in study rooms but also in simulation spaces and the way we teach Americans in clinical settings? »
Muma said life in general and fitness in particular are too confusing to be dealt with through a single field or in a single way.
“It has been shown in many tactics and through studies that interprofessional education, when you have the entire team at your disposal and are informed to combine patient care, or a patient, improves patient outcomes. “
About 4 years ago, when Muma provost, he began having conversations at WSU about more embodied learning and also with the University of Kansas Medical Center about involvement in the KU-Wichita School of Medicine, which had had its own discussions about a new Wichita facility for itself.
The conversations continued and included WSU Tech. Then came the pandemic.
“And of course, COVID has made us think about how we do all sorts of other things, not just in the fitness field, but various things,” Muma said.
He was proud of how WSU’s Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences established a molecular diagnostic laboratory for COVID-19 testing in just a few months. However, he wondered what might have happened if WSU already had a spouse like KU.
“You just think that if we were all together, we probably could have better fulfilled the physical care wishes of the pandemic. “
Along with new thinking tactics, a new public budget has been introduced into the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA.
Muma said one of the goals of the cash is “how can you get out of this post-COVID environment in a way that benefits the community?”
He said WSU and KU reached out to the legislature to get funding from ARPA, “and then they gave us $35 million for this allocation to help it get off the ground. “
WSU and KU also have a $60 million request for Strengthening People and Revitalizing Kansas, a statewide organization that distributes ARPA funds. The schools also asked the legislature for $10 million each of the $300 million earmarked for the center. a mortgage.
“We still want to work hard to create more power and identify the area that can be shared and leveraged in this way, which will likely help it be a little smaller,” Muma said.
The plan is for WSU to move its physician assistant and physical therapy programs, nursing school, communication science and disorders program, public fitness science program, medical laboratory science program, and dental hygiene program to the center.
KU would move its doctor and pharmacy to the middle with 4 clinics.
For WSU Tech, the move can come with its systems for qualified assistants, home fitness assistants, licensed practical nurses, emergency medical technicians, registered nurses, patient care technicians, surgical technology, and fitness care management and management.
Sedgwick County’s Comcare, the county’s outpatient fitness center, could be part of the media at some point.
While no site has been chosen, downtown is likely downtown, around the domain near William and Topeka, from where Wichita Transit is headed to its new home in Delano.
“If you move to any of those types of facilities, they’re downtown,” Muma said.
“He has smart access to Kellogg. . . And, of course, Douglas. Il is centrally located. There’s infrastructure that’s coming there, there’s housing there, there’s entities that will be useful to academics once they’re there.
It is also adjacent to Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine and culinary WSU Tech.
Muma said discussion about the science center began before the osteopathic school was conceived, but said he was in normal talks with the school and might believe that one day he would also have a role in the science center.
“It’s wonderful that they’re here,” Muma said. This is the beginning of a truly comprehensive fitness science center. And that’s how you solve diseases: when you bring other people together. You don’t do it alone.
Although Muma knows firsthand the fitness science centers in Houston and St. Louis, you’re reading Phoenix Bioscience Core because it’s a more recent development. He visited twice, once with a legislative contingent and Robert Simari, executive vice chancellor of KU Medical Center.
Bioscience CEO David Kretor was inspired by two senior directors who “did this together, explored this opportunity, asked questions about what worked and what didn’t. “I was even surprised that they were sitting next to each other.
“I sought to take a picture and send it to our parents. “
What eventually became Bioscience Core began with a push in 2004 to create Phoenix’s first medical school. A physical science center, including the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University, arrived later.
Krietor said Muma and Simari had many technical questions, such as cost-sharing accounting: Which entity will pay for what percentage of critical elements such as construction safety, landscaping and college participation.
He said research is “the most productive thing they do and what we’ve probably spent a little bit more time on at first. “
From 1992 to 1997, Krietor served as director of economic development for the city of Phoenix, “one of the most suburban places. “
He feared it would never be a viable city centre, but said Bioscience Core had replaced it by attracting other young people to paint and study, and new opportunities for dining, listening to music and playing sports emerged as a result.
“It’s very good here,” Kretor said.
Greater Wichita Partnership President Jeff Fluhr sees potential for the Wichita core.
“This may be the largest investment in downtown history, and that’s remarkable, because where will it go next?”
Fluhr called the fitness science center an “incredibly transformative project” just for the middle of the city, but also for the region and state.
In addition to bringing 1,600 additional jobs to downtown, plus two hundred college students and 3,000, Fluhr said the center “is a huge indicator to others beyond our region of how we’re coming together to see wonderful things materialize. “. “
WSU and KU hope to secure the investment for fitness science by the middle of this year, design it in 2023, start the structure in 2024 and finish until 2026, when some of the ARPA money will be used.
Muma is confident in partnering with KU and in his own school’s ability to manage the center.
“One of the things that I think is helping all of this is what is done at (the) innovation campus,” he said of the 130 hectares where 50 partners have settled, adding businesses, organizations and restaurants.
“The university has undergone a lot of transformations in the last 10 years and, I think, has shown this network that we can combine things in a short period of time. “
Muma is already thinking about long-term intermediate stages that will come with more studies and testing.
“Clearly, the combination of those disciplines and universities is probably to create more scholarships and scholarships. . . laboratories and study space. I think there are opportunities for other state establishments to bring their own aspect to that as well.
In a long-term situation envisioned by Muma, this could also come with out-of-state establishments.
However, for starters, Muma said that “it just requires a lot of coordination and a lot of other people give up their way of doing things to fit the other side. So it’s going to be difficult. There is simply no way around this.
He knows that others are wondering if the center will be a reality.
This negativity “really distracts from what we’re looking to do here, yet I know that, having traveled the country and visited universities, I did it a long time ago, in many other places, towns of our size, bigger or smaller.
“This can be done. “
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