[quote=“Niner National, post:273, topic:23614”][quote=“Ninercentral, post:272, topic:23614”][quote=“Nugget, post:271, topic:23614”][quote=“jfickett, post:269, topic:23614”][quote=“JaMiNNiNeR, post:267, topic:23614”]Ideally I would love to see a UNC Charlotte Medical School but if that’s not going to happen I do think the city of Charlotte desperately needs a medical in general for economic development. It is pretty common to have a public medical school separate from the local state university. See The University of Memphis and The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.
http://www.uthsc.edu[/quote]
Common or not, and I’m not disagreeing with you, but it’s still a political hack job to plant a “flagship” state medical school in a metropolitan region where there is already a state university large enough to support one independently of the established brand. Do i get why they do it? Sure, from an objective view, it probably makes sense on a lot of levels, including economic and logistic considerations. But that doesn’t change the fact that the chancellor and BOT should be going to the mat on this and zealously advocating for UNC Charlotte to have its own med school. Visionary leadership means cutting against the grain sometimes…often times. If we had our s*** together and werent pussies about politics, our folks would be out there in the medical, biotech, and venture capital arenas building a coalition of money and community support to prove that our school can hold its own and fulfill the need, increasing our brand and adding greater legitimacy to our graduate and professional program offerings. Instead, we are sitting by the wayside, ruffling no feathers, accepting our place, and cruising on. Im not trying to underestimate or downplay how difficult it would be to go toe to toe and make this happen, but for f***'s sake, at least try.[/quote]
If the med school at ECU had been the UNC-Chapel Hill Medical School in Greenville instead, ECU would be the Appalachian of the east. Say what you will about pig farmers, but they have their political sh*t together.[/quote]
The city has enough political clout to get the med school to be ours. The difference is, they don’t take ownership of us in a truly meaningful way, we are always a second thought, which is a shame, because we do a ton for the city and the region.[/quote]That’s one of the prices we pay for moving out to a (formerly) rural part of the county on the fringes of the city limits.
At the time the school was founded, a move away from center city was all the rage, and the land was donated, so I understand the motive behind the move, but long term, it has certainly isolated us from the benefits of being located near the power players in Charlotte. When business leaders decided in the 90’s that they wanted to revitalize Uptown Charlotte, there is little doubt an Uptown (or near Uptown) campus would have been a major component of those plans. Being 9 miles away, we had nothing to offer for inner city revitalization. Unfortunate and hindsight is 20/20, but I think we could have really been embraced by the Charlotte community if we were more centrally located in Charlotte anchoring a hip neighborhood.[/quote]
I certainly understand your point, but I am not sure what our University would look like if we had done that. When they moved to our current location in 1961 we had hundreds of students. Even forward-looking Miss Bonnie could never have guessed how large we would become. When I arrived in 1977 there were about 7500 students, and downtown Charlotte was not an attractive place for the campus to be. It was much, much smaller and a ghost town after 5:00 pm. There were no bars. In fact, NC did not get liquor by the drink until about 1980, so bars were different then too. Maybe the college would have influenced that, but our campus location was about as hip as uptown at that point, which is to say not at all. If we had built a campus uptown, with enough land for 15,000 students we would have grown to our capacity and either had to stop, or open another campus outside the center city area, like CPCC had to. At 15,000 students we would not have football, and maybe not doctoral programs. I think we would have been a regional university. Maybe through imminent domain we could have continued to grow and expand, but uptown is really expensive now, and that would probably be the great limiter. Realistically, I think where we are allowed us to grow to be the school Charlotte needs (even if the residents do not know it). I believe the light rail is going to be a game changer.