Ithaca College to renovate Ithaca Commons building for new master’s degree program

ITHACA, N.Y. — Ithaca College plans to renovate facilities in the former Rothschild Building on the downtown Ithaca Commons for its new master’s degree program in physician assistant (PA) studies.

The school will use a $1.6 million grant through the New York State Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program (HECap) to help fund the project. The state announced the ground funding in mid-March.

The grant program is part of an initiative to support health-care education by “modernizing facilities and enhancing student learning while supporting economic development,” Ithaca College said. This supplemental instructional site will bring PA students and faculty to the “center of the community that they will help serve.”

Ithaca College says it is recruiting the first class for the new PA master’s program. It has received provisional accreditation from the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant and approval from the New York State Education Department. It’s part of Ithaca College’s School of Health Sciences and Human Performance (HSHP).

The 27-month master’s degree is designed to attract college graduates who are pursuing health-care careers and who come from undergraduate pre-health profession programs such as health sciences, exercise science, athletic training, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and psychology.

The entering cohort this fall will include about 30 students, and classes will continue to expand until the program is at its full capacity of 50 students per cohort.

A physician assistant is a medical professional who diagnoses illness, develops and manages treatment plans, prescribes medications, and often serves as a patient’s principal health-care provider in collaboration with a physician. It’s one of the “fastest growing” professions, with the number of jobs expected to increase 31 percent between 2019 and 2029, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it ranks among the best jobs of 2021, according to U.S. News & World Report.

“Because there’s such a great need for providers in this region, a way to get people to relocate here is to have the program in this region and for them to experience it and fall in love with it, and then stay,” Susan Salahshor, director of the PA program, said.

The program’s focus areas will include rural medicine, family medicine, behavioral and mental-health care, population and community health, and interprofessional education and practice.