Dear Colleagues,

I hope everyone had a great first week and a relaxing Labor Day weekend.

Today, I continue to share with you some of the many gifts I received through my conversations and visits in the last two months.

On August 1, I joined Dr. Jackie Zhang, Dean of the College of Health Professions; Dr. Theresa Bacon-Baguley, Associate Dean of the College of Health Professions; and Simone Jonaitis, Executive Director of the Center for Adult and Continuing Studies to visit GVSU’s Traverse City (TC) Regional Center. The visit was very pleasant and instructive and shed light for me on the breadth and depth of GVSU’s mission and impact. I will share two of the many highlights of the visit:

On the drive to TC, we talked about the role of GVSU’s regional campuses in meeting the educational needs of their surrounding communities. In the case of TC, their Physician Assistant Studies (PA) program was created through a HERSA grant aiming at making education and healthcare more accessible to Northern Michigan rural communities. The regional offering of this program enrolls students from rural and tribal communities and graduates healthcare professionals who mostly (70%) remain in their communities after graduation, thus alleviating healthcare disparities. The impact of this program was nationally recognized in 2020 with the Outstanding Program Award by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association.

Our visit was graciously and generously hosted by Dr. Nick Kopacki, PA Affiliate faculty member and TC Site Director, and Shannon Owen, Director of Northern Michigan Programs in the Center for Adult and Continuing Studies. We met with students, faculty, and community partners. The students from both the TC and Health campuses held a ceremony premiering a video they produced for the Physician Assistant Education Association. The students and faculty interviewed in the video conveyed the mission and impact of the GVSU program. We were all impressed by the students’ work and moved by their passion. I was especially moved by a question posed by Visiting Professor Michelle Strange to her students as they care for rural patients: “what can you do differently to help a patient who drove three hours to see you?” Her question beautifully captures the essence of empathetic care (and education for that matter). The deliberate effort to contextualize and assess what we give through the lens of the receiver’s dispositions and needs. By her question, Professor Strange pithily models empathy. She identified something so simple, yet so important in those patients’ healthcare experience, and so easy for the students to relate to. Several times this past month, that question came to mind, and I felt deep gratitude to Professor Strange for it.

On the way back to Allendale, Dr. Bacon-Baguley took us on a quick tour of the Traverse City Munson Medical Center located on the grounds of the Michigan Asylum. Munson Healthcare is the largest healthcare system in northern Michigan and was founded in 1907 by Dr. Munson with a mission to “cultivate quiet, kind, and dignified manners and politeness in all things.” The Michigan Asylum was founded in 1885 as part of the national decision to radically reform the treatment of the mentally ill from incarceration and punishment to care and kindness. Like several other asylums of the same period, it was designed following the Kirkbride Plan. The Kirkbride Plan is a set of detailed architectural and organizational specifications developed by American Psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride rooted in a philosophy of Moral Treatment and Environmental Determinism. The plan ensures that patients have access to an abundance of natural light, fresh air, and natural settings and that patients engage in the regular practice of meaningful and healthy activities such as gardening. Through its 100 years existence, the asylum, unfortunately, did not live up to Kirkbride’s vision; instead, it followed a similar dark trajectory to that of its sister institutions. What started as a place of safety, dignity, and compassionate care, transformed over the years into a place where mental patients were stripped of their rights, restrained physically, overmedicated against their will, and often subjected to horrifying experimental treatments.

This sobering segment of the visit reminded us of the risks and responsibilities of our professions as scientists, educators, and care providers. It reminded us of the real risk to fall into a slippery slope of moral ambiguity where the ends justify the means and where we can discount the wellbeing and worth of some lives for the benefit of others. It reminded us of our responsibility to assess what we do, not solely based on the moral values du jour, but based on the moral awareness and sensitivities of many generations to come. This was our conversation on the way back, wondering if we are sufficiently critical of what we do, if we are seriously re-examining our assumptions. We wondered: what we are routinely doing today that will horrify our descendants? Whose interests and wellbeing are we discounting today through our actions or lack of action? A sobering but necessary conversation.

Overall, I came home from that visit feeling enriched and transformed but much of what I have seen and heard, but notably by the two questions, one from Professor Strange and one from Dr. Bacon-Baguley. Two particularly good questions. And all that is good must be shared.

Have a great second week of class.

Fatma Mili
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs