St. Mary's University of Minnesota-Rochester to expand

ROCHESTER – St. Mary's University of Minnesota-Rochester is on the cusp of becoming a bigger player in the area's higher-education scene.

SMU hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week to mark the completion of a 10,000-square-foot addition to the school's Cascade Meadow facility in northwest Rochester. It was a coming-out party for a university intent on growth.

With the expansion nearing completion, SMU-Rochester plans to wrap up the transfer of graduate and bachelor completion programs to Cascade Meadow that began three years ago after Jack and Mary Ann Remick donated the building to the university.

For three decades, SMU-Rochester has rented space from Rochester Community and Technical College, where its identity had been somewhat overshadowed by its larger partner.

SMU-Rochester will now not only be its own landlord, but it will be poised to expand, the Post-Bulletin reported.

"That's our hope," said Scott Walker, SMU's associate vice president for partnerships at the Rochester campus. "We really have high hopes for Rochester. It's such a growing community."

Its emergence as a stand-alone university is another sign of the decadeslong shakeout of Rochester's once balkanized higher education scene. Within the past several years, the Minnesota School of Business has closed, and Cardinal Stritch University and the College of St. Scholastica no longer offer on-the-ground programming in Rochester.

"It's kind of come down to just a handful of providers," said Don Supalla, executive director of the Greater Rochester Advocates for Universities and Colleges, a higher education nonprofit, and one-time president of RCTC. "You got the big three publics and then you got pretty much Augsburg and St. Mary's."

SMU-Rochester's graduate and bachelor completion programs serve about 350 students a year.

SMU's presence in Rochester has been boosted by several factors. Like WSU-Rochester, it has a main undergraduate campus that is a mere 40 miles away. Its Minneapolis-based campus has the cachet of being the second-biggest provider of graduate programming in the state, after the University of Minnesota.

SMU-Rochester has also benefited from powerful benefactors in its corner, namely Jack and Mary Ann Remick.

Three years ago, Jack Remick, co-founder of the Fortune 500 company Fastenal, donated what was then Cascade Meadow Environmental Science Center and its 90 acres of wetlands and prairie to SMU after the facility failed to draw much foot traffic as an environmental center.

In fall 2019, SMU-Rochester will launch a 3 + 2 physician assistant program, a collaborative effort between SMU and the Mayo Clinic. The program will be taught in state-of-the-art rooms on the second level of the new addition. SMU officials hope to use it as template for future program development.

Under the fast-track program, SMU students would complete their undergraduate courses in three years at the Winona campus. They then would transfer to the Rochester campus to earn a two-year master's in physician assistant studies, taught by Mayo faculty.

Such hybrid programs are growing in popularity in the U.S., as they allow students to shave a year off their undergraduate or graduate studies. SMU's 3 + 2 program will be the first in Minnesota, Walker said.

"We're accelerating this for these kids," Walker said. "It's going to save them on dollars. It's going to get them out in the workforce a lot quicker. As a parent and as a student, that's a pretty attractive deal."

The arrangement between SMU and the Mayo Clinic proved to be mutually beneficial, Walker said. Since the faculty teaching the master's part of the program are paid by the Mayo Clinic, it reduced program costs for SMU. And with the anticipated shortage of physicians, it allows Mayo to create a new pipeline for much-needed health care workers.

There are no specific plans on the board for new programming beyond the P.A. program, Walker said, but SMU is exploring the possibilities.

"If we don't have space to grow, we have space to make space to grow," Walker said about the school's surroundings. "If we wanted to do more, we could do more."

Cascade Meadow's proximity to Lourdes High School could make offering courses to Post-Secondary Education Options students a possibility. SMU is also looking at online offerings and a blend of digital and face-to-face programming. SMU is also intrigued by potential partnerships with some businesses in Rochester.