The College of Charleston is hoping to address health care workforce shortages with its new School of Health Sciences, opening in summer 2022.
The college’s board of trustees voted unanimously to launch the new school at a Jan. 27 meeting followed by a news conference. The school will build upon the college’s current Department of Health and Human Performance and, ultimately, create a pipeline for CofC students to attend the Medical University of South Carolina.
CofC President Andrew Hsu said he and his staff had been considering opening a school of health sciences since he started in the position in Oct. 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear a new school was needed. Over the course of the pandemic, nurses and doctors at MUSC and other hospitals throughout South Carolina have been pushed to the point of exhaustion, with many leaving the profession.
Health care shortages were already a concern before the pandemic. South Carolina is projected to have the fourth-worst shortage in nurses by 2030, according to a 2017 report by RegisteredNursing.org, an online trade publication that analyzed data from the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis.
“The pandemic has certainly reinforced the notion that for human society to operate at optimal levels we need more and more of our top minds working to improve human health,” Hsu said in the news conference.
Provost Suzanne Austin said in an interview with The Post and Courier before the conference that although the school will be opening in the summer, it will be up to two years before the college opens new programs for students. In the next few months Austin will work with planning committees to identify new programs for the school and the costs and logistics that go along with them.
“It’s a really wonderful opportunity for the college to address workforce needs in the Lowcountry and the state,” Austin said.
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Austin added that she will spend the next few months developing plans with Zoher Kapasi, dean of the College of Health Professions at MUSC. At the news conference, Kapasi said the university is dedicated to working with the College of Charleston to build a sustainable pipeline of students that will ultimately fill workforce gaps in the Lowcountry.
The new school also gives the college a chance to recruit more students. Hsu said he hopes it will help establish the College of Charleston as a nationally renowned university.
“An independent school gives it more visibility so students know that we have those programs and this would be a good place to study health-related disciplines,” Hsu said.
The College of Charleston doesn’t have any plans to build a new facility for the school at this time, but that may be considered in the future, Hsu said. The college plans to renovate current health and human performance classrooms with the announcement of the new school.
