NEOUCOM Retiring president led school's unprecedented growth

Robert Blacklow's 10-year tenure is about double the national average for medical school chiefs.
By RON COLE
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
ROOTSTOWN -- Growing up outside Boston, there was never much doubt about what profession Robert Blacklow would pursue: medicine.
He was nearly born with a stethoscope around his neck.
For starters, Blacklow's father was a physician and ran his practice out of the family home in Belmont, Mass.
From almost the time Blacklow could walk, he'd tag along on Saturday mornings as his father made his hospital rounds. When there was a house call to be made, little Robert would go along and sit in the car.
"Sometimes he'd take us in the house," he said. "Sometimes we'd get milk and maybe a cookie."
So it was no surprise that when it came time for Blacklow to select a career path, medicine was at the top of the list.
"No one ever came out and said what you had to do," said Blacklow, whose family tree of doctors also includes an uncle, brother and son. "You didn't realize it, but that expectation was there."
Retirement
Now 67 and a grandfather, Blacklow reflected on those early years in a 90-minute interview last week as he prepared to retire as president of the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.
A Harvard-educated doctor who came to NEOUCOM from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Blacklow leaves the medical school near Ravenna on June 30 after 10 years at the helm.
His decade-long tenure is about double the average for medical school presidents nationwide and the second-longest among chief executives of Ohio's 15 public universities.
"I think the medical school has come to a nice, new level," said Blacklow, sporting his trademark bow tie.
"It's time to turn the reins over to somebody else."
The medical school announced last week that Dr. Lois Margaret Nora, associate dean of academic affairs and administration at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, will be the next president.
10 years of growth
Under Blacklow's guidance, the 419-student medical school -- founded 28 years ago in a unique partnership with Youngstown State, Kent State and Akron universities -- has experienced unprecedented growth:
UThe school's endowment fund jumped from less than $1 million to nearly $7 million. In 1992, the fund received less than $100,000 in contributions; in 2001, contributions amounted to $2.6 million.
URevenue from research grants skyrocketed from $1.4 million in 1992 to $8.1 million.
UThe campus off Interstate 76, about 30 miles west of Youngstown, doubled in size. Five new structures with a price tag of $22 million, including a $6.6 million medical education conference center, have gone up in the last decade.
But Blacklow said NEOUCOM's greatest achievement in the last 10 years goes well beyond fund-raising, research and physical plant.
Today, the school -- which Blacklow said used to be known as "nuk'em" to some and "neou.com" to others -- is gaining regional and national attention and respect.
That, he says, has sparked energy on campus and gone a long way to healing the school's inferiority complex.
"I'm beginning to see the pride of being a part of this institution," he said. "Pride on the part of alumni, faculty and employees. People want to make things better."
The school's beginnings
Ohio lawmakers created NEOUCOM in the 1970s as part of a national push to open more medical schools.
NEOUCOM's organization -- in which YSU, Kent State and University of Akron feed students into a six-year combined bachelor's/medical degree program -- remains unique among the nation's 125 medical schools.
In nearly 30 years, NEOUCOM has produced 1,846 doctors. Half of them practice in Ohio, including more than 100 in the Mahoning Valley.
Blacklow said the collaboration with YSU, Akron and KSU has worked well, yet it's vital NEOUCOM maintains a separate identify.
"We are a medical school, and we need to be seen as such," he said.
Blacklow said the biggest challenge facing NEOUCOM's new leader may be devising a way to "continue to grow or at least keep pace in a state that is really very shaky in terms of the new era of technology and science."
"We cannot live on steel, coal and iron. We have to unrust ourselves. Michigan has done a much better job. Illinois has done a better job. Ohio hasn't, and it's a frame of mind."
"We're handicapped," he said about Ohio. "We're starting half a mile behind in a quarter-mile race."
Tuition increases
Adjusted for inflation, NEOUCOM is getting less state funding today than 10 years ago, Blacklow said.
The cuts have meant continual tuition increases. Last month, for instance, NEOUCOM trustees boosted tuition by 14 percent or nearly $2,000 to $15,738 a year.
Dwindling state support also has forced public schools such as NEOUCOM to act more like private universities, pounding the streets for funds from other sources, Blacklow said.
"It's no longer the privates going after private money and the state institutions going after state money," he said. "We're all going after the same pot now, and it's going to become more competitive.
"But, I also think cream rises to the top, and I think ... we have cream."
In his more than 30 years in medical education -- from Boston to Chicago to Philadelphia -- Blacklow said he has seen a distinct change in the attitude of medical students.
While bright as ever, "some of their agendas have changed," he said.
"The idea that you go into medicine because it was a noble profession is less. Medical students feel a sense of entitlement today: 'I'm here. Get me through.'"
"Maybe," he added, "we should really not give the MD degree until you retire, then we'll know who the real physicians were."