Building name honors Meshel

Meshel is credited with being a driving force behind creation of NEOUCOM.

ROOTSTOWN — Former state Sen. Harry Meshel has been recognized with the naming of an educational building in his honor at the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.

The Harry Meshel Hall for Integrated Health Professions Education was dedicated in a ceremony this week. The colleges’ Multidisciplinary Laboratories were also dedicated on the same day.

The Harry Meshel Hall for Integrated Health Professions Education is “one of the most technologically capable classrooms in the state of Ohio,” said Dr. Lois Margaret Nora, president and dean of the College of Medicine.

Meshel Hall is key to NEOUCOM’s collaborative curriculum that finds medical and pharmacy students studying together.

NEOUCOM named the new facility in Meshel’s honor as a tribute to his vision in seeing the strength, quality and integrity of NEOUCOM expand, flourish and become a center for the education and training of health care professionals from multiple disciplines, school officials said.

As the Ohio Senator representing the 33rd District and the Mahoning Valley, Meshel played a major leadership role in the creation of a consortium for medical education in northeastern Ohio, and he is regarded as one of the primary originators of NEOUCOM.

He served in the state senate from 1970 to 1993 in several posts, including majority leader and whip and minority leader. He was recently appointed to the Youngstown State University Board of Trustees by Gov. Ted Strickland.

“The new interdisciplinary laboratories and classrooms are all part of the success of NEOUCOM, built through the hard work and struggle of the college's faculty, staff and individual donors. That is who deserves the tribute,” Meshel said.