Upstate Medical branch funds needed

Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, needs financial support from the state to move forward with a Fort Drum region branch campus.

College President Dr. David R. Smith attended a 7:30 a.m. leadership breakfast Tuesday at First Presbyterian Church, 403 Washington St., to share roadblocks the medical college faces with its branch campus plan.

"We need an appropriation," he said. "It's going to be a little over $1 million a year to start out. We need that base funding."

He previously said that Upstate Medical would need $5 million over five years toward establishing the pilot branch campus, and that the medical college would contribute $3.5 million on top of that.

Dr. Smith said he recognizes there will be midyear state funding cuts, but he is confident state leaders will support the need for expanding the college's medical education programs to the north country.

A bill was introduced May 7 by state Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine, D-Cape Vincent, and state Sen. David J. Valesky, D-Oneida, that would direct Dr. Smith to conduct a study to explore the viability and need for a branch campus in the Fort Drum region.

The bill, which has been referred to the state Higher Education Committee, also would direct Dr. Smith to conduct a similar study in the Mohawk Valley region.

"It would mean it's a state study, and there's validity to it when we ask for funding," Dr. Smith said. "It's important to have that study. I think that is the groundwork."

He said a Fort Drum branch campus would work in some similar ways to Upstate Medical's Binghamton branch campus, in that physicians in the community would teach classes for a stipend and benefits.

Dr. Smith said the ideal Fort Drum branch campus would be in Watertown, located within Jefferson Community College, 1220 Coffeen St.

If a medical college branch campus is located in the north country, there may be greater chances for the north country to retain physicians and other medical professionals who graduate from that campus, Dr. Smith said.

"If you do nothing, the likeliness of a physician coming to a region like this is the low single digits," he said. "We almost have to have a distributed model if we want to grow our enrollment by 30 percent."

Of the medical college's 160 students, approximately 40 are receiving their education on the Binghamton campus. Daniel N. Hurley, Upstate Medical assistant vice president for government and community relations, said there's no time frame for the enrollment to surpass 200 students.

Mr. Hurley said when Upstate Medical wanted to expand its 120-member class in the early 1970s, it opened the Binghamton campus a few years later.

"There are some symmetries between these two things," he said.

For more information on the branch campus idea, contact Mr. Hurley via mail at SUNY Upstate Medical University, 750 E. Adams St., Syracuse, N.Y. 13204; by phone at 464-4832, or by e-mail at hurleyd@upstate.edu.