Yah the HPC is an entirely different matter.
To all you who have yet to visit or already have, what the school doesn't always tell you up front is that the main DO building is also the main Pharmacy building. The entire facility has study rooms (which are called break-out rooms), and the pharm program has priority over them..all of them until 3pm. The only other program that rarely studies at HPC is the veterninary program because they have their own building. On the occasion that more than 2 programs have exams, good luck finding a place to study in the HPC. In addition, the library hours would be forgivable for a graduate-level institution if at the very least the HPC was open later than midnight, especially on exam weekends. The school can't manage to do even that (though they have "graciously granted" extended hours at the petition of the student body on occasion), but it makes even less sense that while they schedule exams regularly on most three-day weekends to give us extra time to study, the HPC is closed on most of those holidays.
The new building is indeed on the way, but as to exactly how many of the Dean's promises will come true is up to anybody's guess. Why you ask? Because while Dean Adams is very good at running the school as a politician, it unfortunately has led to many lies. What I have heard from those "chosen few" who signed up for pacific northwest rotations is that the Dean flat out lied on more than one occasion regarding the condition of Western's rotation sites. Low and behold, this year the school made public that it's abolishing the northwest rotation program and instead opening up a satellite university near Corvallis, OR to maintain its "market share" of students that it is allowed to enroll, as determined by the governing body AOA Commission on
Osteopathic College Accreditation (
COCA). Why do I say "market share?" Because a big concern was the loss of rotation sites when the Yakima school opened. Much of the reason why COCA allowed the expansion of the entering classes by 30 seats (which is how Western's enrollment size rivals that of even many allopathic schools) is because there was no osteopathic school in the pacific northwest, and the promise to COCA was that rotation-education quality would be maintained by sending those 30 back to the pacific northwest.
When COCA was on campus last year to put Western through the accred. process, I personally heard with my own ears one of the COCA staff asking the Dean if the students had "...a facility available to them 24 hours a day." The dean, being the excellent politician and CEO that he is, answered "Yes, this building is open 24 hours." For me, that was the last remnants of my image of the dean go right out the window. For me, a large part of why I came here was because the dean himself made an appearance on interview day, and I bought into what he was selling, hook, line, and sinker.
To those of you who it seems are students at Western, it is relieving to hear that you still do not regret it. I just want applicants to know what I wish someone had told me, when I was an applicant. I write this not to slander the school. This is still a school that has existed for over 30 years, and the bottom line is that this school has produced many physicians. However, I can't stand by and allow students to committ so much money, time, and effort, without having a more whole picture of this place, because I think we can all agree the school is all about patting itself on the back. This school brags about its achievements, when really it's the high-caliber of the students that has gotten them through, NOT the excellence of the resources Western makes available.
I will say this...the people here, meaning the student body, are great. The classmates are awesome (most of them anyway, as each class will have its share of insecure self-proclaimed "gunners" and administration suck-ups who look out for their own gains, such as people whose name includes the word "grove", and not the good of their fellow classmates). A very small, miniscule fraction of the faculty, really do care and my fear is that, as stated in my earlier post, will not stick around for the politics of the administration. At what other school will one of the assistant-deans be the favorite nephew of the president of the university? At what other school will the president's son be given free-reign in the academic setting where no prior experience in the didactic realm exists? Yes...President Pumerantz's son, also Dr. Pumerantz (a DO), has made the last 2 years very difficult for the last 2 classes of second years, with his position as not only course director of a single course, but really second-year curriculum director. The drama he managed to spark by, in front of the student body, criticizing tenured faculty, as well as one of the assistant-deans who is in charge of curriculum development, was intense to put it lightly. It must be nice having the right last name.
This place is not for all. It is for the self-motivated learner. And even then, buyer beware, because, while it is certainly naive to expect anything more for your 6-figure debt than that piece of paper in the end, there are institutions out there who truly are better established, and rather than trying to run 9 programs haphazardly, seek to run only a few very well.
It could come as a shock to people not inclined to the hammock lifestyle.
