Physician assistant program readied

POTSDAM — Students will not be admitted to Clarkson University's physician-assistant program for another year, but behind the scenes, staff members are busy getting the new program ready for opening day.

The program will be located at Clarkson Hall. Staffers are getting ready to move into the building within the next few weeks; then they'll begin reviewing textbooks and awaiting accreditation from the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant Inc.

"We called in January. The first meeting they had open to review the program is in September 2011," said Michael B. Whitehead, director of the program. "There's no doubt in my mind that we'll be accredited. That's just the timetable we have to work with."

The board meets only twice a year to review new programs and reaccredit existing ones.

The university announced the master's program last spring. Since then, it has been setting up agreements with area medical centers for clinical work and answering questions from interested students.

"We get a number of calls every week both from the applicant point of view and also from clinical sites to say that they are interested in coming in to lecture or being a clinical site for us," said Mr. Whitehead, who is from Adams.

Students will not be admitted to the program until January 2012. Mr. Whitehead said he anticipates enrolling 10 to 15 to start with. The program likely will not get much bigger than 30 students.

There are three full-time and one part-time employees in the program. An instructor will be hired over the near year.

"You think, 'Oh, we're just going to put a program together and bang, bang, bang.' It doesn't work like that," Mr. Whitehead said. "Since then, we've been designing the courses and deciding the order we're going to teach them in. We're creating syllabi. We're working on which books we're going to use and what equipment we need to buy."

The program also must wait until Canton-Potsdam Hospital's physical rehabilitation program can move to its Lawrence Avenue medical campus. That move should happen soon, according to the hospital.