The past eight years have brought two transformative additions to the Penn State medical community. The first was the establishment of the University Park Regional Campus of the Penn State College of Medicine, offering the opportunity for medical students to study medicine in a clinical setting in the State College area. The second was the establishment of the Penn State Health Family and Community Medicine Residency at Mount Nittany Medical Center, State College’s first and only medical residency program.
Both of these achievements were largely made possible through the leadership of Dr. Eugene Marsh.
Now that the original vision has been realized, Marsh is set to retire. His last official day as professor of neurology and educational affairs with the University Park Regional Campus of Penn State College of Medicine will be Monday, June 11. Marsh recently spent some time reflecting on the accomplishments of the past eight years and his long career as a physician and an educator.
Growing up in North Carolina and Alabama, Marsh did not envision going into medicine until he was halfway through his freshman year at the University of Alabama. But he did always feel that whatever field of study he eventually went into, he would like to teach.
“I always enjoyed teaching wherever I was; it didn’t matter what level, I just enjoyed it,” Marsh said. “My dad was a teacher. He was very passionate about what he taught and very good at it, and I think I caught some of that passion.”
After graduating from the University of South Alabama College of Medicine and completing a residency in neurology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Marsh eventually found his way back to Alabama, where he practiced neurology and stroke neurology and taught at the Tuscaloosa Regional Campus of the UAB School of Medicine. He served as dean of that campus for six years before hearing about an opportunity to establish the same kind of regional campus for the Penn State College of Medicine in 2010.
“The idea was attractive to me because what they were interested in doing was very similar to what I had been involved with in Tuscaloosa,” said Marsh.
“In Alabama, the main (medical) campus was in Birmingham, but the regional campus was in Tuscaloosa, the location of the main campus of the university. Here, the main (medical) campus was in Hershey, and the regional campus they wanted to establish was at the main university campus in State College. And, what they were interested in was very similar. They wanted a third- and fourth-year clinical campus, where students would spend their first two years in Hershey and then come here for years 3 and 4. It was going to be a community-based educational experience where we not only worked with Penn State faculty, but with faculty from the community that were not necessarily tied into Penn State. That’s the way most regional campuses work.”
After a few visits to State College, “I felt that it had all the necessary ingredients for this to be successful. The only mistake I made was moving my family from Tuscaloosa, Ala., to State College, Pa., on Dec. 21. They started talking to me again around April,” he said, laughing.
Working with a very small team, including former Mount Nittany Health President and CEO Steve Brown, and Steven Speece, administrative director of Penn State Medical Group, Marsh worked at establishing relationships with local physicians while going through the complicated application process toward establishing a regional campus. The University Park Regional Campus accepted its first third-year class of medical students in 2012.
“Those were our ‘pioneers.’ They were an awesome group of young people,” Marsh said. “They not only came here to be educated, but they came here to help us understand our strengths and weaknesses. That was really, really critical. … This spring, we will graduate our fifth class of fourth-year students.”
During that time, Marsh continued to practice and to teach neurology, serving as senior associate dean for the Penn State College of Medicine Regional Medical Campus as well as associate director of the Penn State Medical Group in State College until 2014.
Once the regional campus was up and running, Marsh turned his attention to the next big challenge: developing a residency program. With another small team at the helm, this time including former Penn State human resources administrator Billie Willits, local retired neurosurgeon Paul Nelson, local consultant Barbara DeVinney-Mills and program director Dr. Joseph Wiedemer, the Penn State Health Family and Community Medicine Residency at Mount Nittany Medical Center was established in 2014.
“We have our first graduating class of residents this year, and they have done really well according to all the metrics we use,” Marsh said. “The hope is that some of them will stay in the area and help fulfill the needs of central Pennsylvania.”
In fact, this is the legacy Marsh feels is one of the most important benefits of bringing medical education into a community like State College.
“One of our first medical students from the class that graduated in 2014 did an ER residency in Texas. He returned this year to work at Mount Nittany, so that is a wonderful cycle to see,” said Marsh.
“Having seen this play out in Alabama, I know that many of the medical students and the residents will either be staying here or coming back some day to practice and to teach. I’ve seen the amazing impact this can have on a community and a region. That will be one of the long-range positive impacts of the campus.”
Marsh is enthusiastic about what the future holds for the regional campus, as the Penn State College of Medicine has introduced a new approach to medical education here.
“The leadership in Hershey saw an opportunity to do something totally innovative — a completely different way of educating medical students,” Marsh said. “With the help of Medical Student Design Partners and local faculty leadership, a new curriculum has been developed that is receiving a lot of national attention as a new way to train medical students.
“We will have a full four-year curriculum here. Instead of most medical programs that train students in science for the first couple of years, and then introduce them to clinical care in the third and fourth year, this curriculum brings them into the clinical world in the first week of medical school and gives them a basis upon which to go back and learn the science. … I feel really optimistic about where this curriculum is going. I think it’s going to improve the way medical students are educated here and probably be a model for other places.”
With his biggest goals accomplished, Marsh feels the time is right to retire.
“If you look at what we set out to accomplish in 2011 — establishing a regional campus for medical students, establishing a family medicine residency, establishing a presence in the community that would allow us to be successful — I am satisfied that that has happened,” Marsh said. “My family has even adjusted to central Pennsylvania winters!”
