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We bring you stories and insights in the Lansing region from a student media perspective. Brought to you by Focal Point News in the Michigan State University College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Impact 89FM, The Lookout at Lansing Community College, and The State News.
Welcome to the Reporter Roundtable, where we will be diving into the latest stories and news that shape our community. My name is Maren, and I'm your host this wonderful morning. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to reporter roundtable for an exciting new season. And today, we're gonna discuss some interesting news with Emilio, who has been actually in our podcast last semester. Hi, Emilio.
Speaker 1:How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good. Thanks for having me back. I'm glad to be the first part of this new season.
Speaker 1:I am glad as well. Well, to make a quick rundown of the news we're gonna talk about, Now former MSU College of Human Medicine Dean Aaron Sousa has stepped down from his role to start a new role in Chicago. And people have been having debates about whether if he resigned because of the new One Team, One Health or for other reasons. I want to start with what initially made you cover this news?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So we one of our sources kind of gave us the heads up that this news was going to be coming last week, Dean Aaron Souza from the College of Human Medicine would be resigning. So we had a a little bit of time to kinda get that story ready, and ultimately, you know, early last week, that news officially came out of MSU that he was resigning, and, like you said, leaving for a position at, I think, Rosalind Franklin University, which is a medical school outside of Chicago.
Speaker 1:So I want to ask, what is this big one team, one health?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so kind of overshadowing or kind of running underneath this entire story of Seuss' resignation is that it's a pretty consequential moment for medical programs at Michigan State. Early this year, President Gusquist had announced this big initiative called the One Team One Health Plan. You know, they were going to consider some pretty monumental changes, some of them including, or primarily including merging the colleges of human medicine and osteopathic medicine into a singular college of medicine. And so this was an initiative that, at least to our understanding, has had sort of a mixed reception from faculty. Some people are worried about, you know, the colleges potentially losing their identities, and also just accreditation.
Speaker 2:It's difficult for colleges to, you know, be authorized by these accreditation organizations to be able to grant degrees. And so when you start combining things and start kind of melding programs into one, you start to run the risk of potentially not getting accredited again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I've heard that they have both different philosophies, each college, and they have a different curriculum. So I don't know how they're gonna handle that in one big college. It is pretty interesting to me too. Do you think the faculty knew before this project was going to be implemented, or did it just happen?
Speaker 2:So we got our hands on a survey that was done internally within College of Human Medicine faculty. And again, one of the main takeaways there was that a lot of faculty, think over half, were concerned primarily about the transparency of this program. A lot of the work happened over the summer, so kind of understandably, maybe they weren't paying so close of an attention to kind of the progress of this. There's a there's this council that's kind of currently working on a set of recommendations that they're later gonna present to Gusquitz for his own consideration. But currently a lot of faculty are kind of worried about, hey, like we don't actually know what's going on with this program, and we don't even feel like our input is really being addressed here.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, the university has also done things like these surveys, kind of trying to gauge where the faculty are.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, do you think the controversy behind this whole issue is logical? Do you think this could create a good, beneficial collaborative team? Or do you think it could kind of take away the identity of each colleges?
Speaker 2:I can't give my own opinion on whether the One Team One Health project is beneficial or negative, but I do think it's interesting the different histories and like you mentioned, the philosophies behind the cause of human medicine versus osteopathic medicine. My general understanding right is that human medicine, you know, a degree from that an MD is going to be able to authorize you to kind of, you know, pursue a lot more kind of pharmaceutical or medical realms of, practicing medicine. Meanwhile, osteopathic medicine is more focused on this kind of whole body, almost like therapeutic style of medicine. And so combining these schools is really interesting because you have these very, you know, schools that are dedicated to producing physicians, but at the same time have very different philosophies at their core. It will be interesting to see how, you know, if they decide to go through with this, how those differences will be reconciled.
Speaker 1:Right. Because from the survey data, more than half of the faculty were kind of against this whole thing. And do you think the university should have addressed it beforehand, knowing most of the faculty doesn't agree with this collaboration?
Speaker 2:I think one thing important to note is that this is ultimately an in progress situation, and for example, at the most recent Faculty Senate meeting, there were some of those conversations regarding that survey data, and they had brought, one faculty member had brought up, you know, hey, how do we, you know, how do we move forward knowing that right now 50% of our faculty wouldn't really support this if they had it up to vote? And if I remember correctly, I think generally the answer from the university was it's a work in progress and we're going to build towards it, but this isn't the end date yet. Again, they have until I believe November when they'll finally finalize the set of recommendations, and that will be kind of a moment where we see is the university willing to take this jump.
Speaker 1:So it's not like super clear that they're gonna absolutely do it, but there's a big chance, but it's not super clear.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So that makes me question, maybe the dean's resignation was not about that, or maybe it was. What do you think the sources that you gathered show, kind of?
Speaker 2:Ultimately, we don't know. Know, know, Sousa was not available to comment when we filed that story, and but he did provide a statement that was kind of sent out to faculty within the College of Human Medicine, with the main takeaway kind of emphasizing the fact that, you know, highlighting achievements that the college had accomplished during his deanship. He had been there for, he had served as interim dean as well as permanent dean for a couple of years over the past decade. But he didn't really hint as to an underlying reason as to why he left.
Speaker 1:How might this collaboration affect current and new students, you think?
Speaker 2:I think it's gonna be really interesting if you are a student entering one of these merged colleges. You know, part of the One Team, One Health plan has included this sort of like blended curriculum that, you know, draws from different perspectives while at the same time, you know, maybe I should be clear here, this combined College of Medicine would, in theory, still provide two degree paths. You would still be able to get an MD and you would still be able to get an OD or a DO. But as for what the actual student perspective would look like, I think we will really just have to wait and see what it looks like if it's executed upon.
Speaker 1:True. I mean, if it is executed, it is really gonna show us. At least they can have two different certificates though, because initially I thought merging the colleges, you just graduate from one of them. But it's good that that is kind of clear. In the bigger picture, what do you think the faculty's intentions were in making this decision?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. And I think that's ultimately the idea behind One Team One Health didn't come out of the faculty as much as it did out of this very small council that had been kind of created to explore some of these like big bold ideas, right? I think at the beginning of his term, President Guskowitz had kind of mentioned, right, this interest in exploring big bold ideas. And this is maybe the first example of what that sort of idea might look like, but to my understanding, that idea mostly originated kind of from this individual council, and then was kind of proposed at large to the MSU community.
Speaker 1:Do you think this will affect the funding of the research and study produced from these colleges? Like would it be a separate funding for each, or all over together like one funding? I think that's what people are concerned about as well.
Speaker 2:You know, MSU, at least the administration and the council behind the plan right now, has said that combining these two colleges is going to result in sort of a unified research agenda that's gonna kinda let you leverage the strength of these two colleges in order to get better research grants and acquire more funding. So in that terms, they're really selling it on this idea of we have this unified front and we're not repeating research efforts in the room next over, that this will be a real plus for the university. But at the same time, I think, you know, MSU is currently undergoing budget cuts, I think it was 9% going into the school year. And I think that there is a worthwhile question about what will the ultimate price tag look like of combining. If I had to guess, it would probably be, it would come out cheaper on the other end.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:would find it hard to imagine that they would kind of do this expensive project at a time where they need to cut the budget, but again, as to what the actual truth is, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Do you know why MSU is cutting their budget kind of? Is this like all over the nation kind of thing? Is that just like an MSU thing?
Speaker 2:MSU cut its budget, or at least announced that it was going to cut its budget, at the end of last spring. And kind of the context that President Guskwitz gave at the time was that a combination of factors including rising health care costs for employees. True. But there were factors that had kind of contributed to this need to and also when when Guskwitz had first come into the presidency, he had mentioned that one of his, you know, goals was to balance the budget. This is something that he had his mind on.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Do you think this will change the current reputation MSU has in newcomers' eyes?
Speaker 2:You know, that's interesting because MSU's osteopathic medicine program is one of the better regarded programs in the entire nation. Osteopathic medicine, it's a relatively newer field, but at the same time, MSU had kind of created this program that is very well respected. So I I do wonder if, you know, in the process of this combination, we'll see that perhaps that, you know, that that one benefit of being able to say, you know, we have this incredible osteopathic medicine program will kind of need to be melted into, We have this amazing College of Medicine program that also includes, you know, getting your DO.
Speaker 1:Overall in your experience of reporting this news, did you have a bit of a difficulty in obtaining evidence and sources and people, or was it overall an easy news, you think?
Speaker 2:I would say, overall it was a straightforward process. I think that we have sources that trust us and we have an ability to get the information we need to report the story as accurate as possible.
Speaker 1:Do you think the controversy behind this news affected you producing it or you wouldn't say so?
Speaker 2:I think for us, ultimately our job is to do the news, you know, so we have to, you know, regardless of any sort of outside controversy, we're simply reporting what is known, what we can verify, and so that was what ended up in the final product.
Speaker 1:Overall, it is pretty interesting to see how MSU is changing certain stuff, like its faculty, its colleges. I wonder what we're gonna see moving on besides just this one big change. Do you think it's gonna continue of different changes and new things? Just as the president said, he wants to explore new big ideas?
Speaker 2:That's a worthwhile question, and I think right now, you know, we don't know. And I think that one of the questions that a lot of institutions are asking themselves right now is how do we prove our value to the government, the American public, as well as just, you know, people that look at us and say, why should we fund you? And so I think that if anything, the questions about kind of what comes out of MSU, what big projects come out of MSU, maybe centered around this idea that universities right now might feel like they need to prove themselves.
Speaker 1:Well, is there anything you would want to add on?
Speaker 2:No, I think you covered and you asked all the right questions. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for joining us, Emilio. It was great to have you again.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I also would like to thank station manager, Ashley Land, general manager, Jeremy Whiting, and program director, McKenna Lounge, and, of course, our beloved listeners. If you're interested in listening to our archive of stories and other episodes, you can find us at our website at impact89fm.org under the news section. See you next episode.