Seated (L. to R.): Dr. Tony Atwater, President IUP; Dr. Craig C. McKirgan, President COSM.
Standing (L. to R.): Dr. Cheryl T. Samuels, Provost & VP of Academic Affairs of IUP, Mr. Thomas G. Honaker III, CEO COSM, Dr. Carleen C. Zoni, Dean, College of Health & Human Services, IUP.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania President Dr. Tony Atwater and Dr. Craig C. McKirgan, President of the Center for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine (COSM), based in Indiana, signed a partnership agreement today.

“We are extremely proud of our relationship with COSM and appreciative of the services and experiential learning opportunities that the professionals at COSM provide for our students and our programs,” said President Atwater. “This formal agreement will strengthen this already mutually beneficial relationship and offer new options and possibilities for IUP, COSM and our nation’s future health care providers studying at IUP,” he said.

“All of us at COSM are extremely proud and excited to be an integral part of the IUP student education process,” stated McKirgan. Dr. McKirgan also serves as the Medical Director for the IUP Athletic Training Education Program. “COSM has served IUP dating back prior to 1993 via the Sports Medicine aspect of athlete care. However, through the hard work of the IUP administration and staff, COSM has now been able to provide clinical experiences for many of IUP’s students who are interested in the health sciences. We continue to look forward to expanding and developing our relationship with IUP. ”

“Simply put, this agreement will help to develop COSM as an integral part of the IUP College of Health and Human Services academic team,” said Dr. Carleen Zoni, Dean of the College of Health and Human Services.
Currently, COSM offers presentations to classes on clinical medical issues for athletic training majors that augment traditional classroom work through experiential learning opportunities.

The IUP Dietetic Internship Program now provides nutritional counseling services to COSM patients at its office site, and COSM offers many enriching student opportunities to athletic training students for supervised clinical education.

These opportunities currently include Saturday injury clinics at COSM, weekly injury clinics at the IUP Sports Medicine Center, educational rotations through the COSM office, and observations of surgical procedures performed by COSM physicians.

COSM also provides seven in-service education programs per year, and COSM physicians lecture occasionally in courses of the Athletic Training Education Program at IUP. Students in this program also observe in the operating room, physician’s office, or other facilities.

With this formal partnership, IUP seeks to enhance the experiential learning opportunities already available and to expand the existing opportunities for Athletic Training majors into full-fledged student internships; to establish additional internships for students in other health care areas as appropriate in collaboration with COSM; to maintain nutrition counseling services at COSM conducted by dietetic interns under the supervision of faculty of the Department of Food and Nutrition; to establish opportunities for graduate students in other fields of study to work with COSM as deemed appropriate by IUP and COSM, and to establish advanced internship opportunities for students in the College honors track, which is currently under development.

“This partnership could lead to inclusion of additional health care related fields of students, including internship opportunities for graduate students in our new masters of health services administration,” Dr. Zoni added.

As part of the partnership, COSM and IUP will establish grand rounds, where students observe physicians and other health care providers discussing clinical cases.

“This is an important program for our students,” Dr. Zoni said. “Grand rounds convey new information and develop clinical reasoning skills, and in fact, they are so valuable in the education of health professionals that we may, in the future, require them in specific courses,” Dr. Zoni said. “Grand rounds could also be established as an advanced form of internship,” she said.

While student development to enhance current and future patient care remains the primary objective for the partnership, Dr. Zoni noted that this formal agreement will help to encourage exciting possibilities in terms of collaborative learning opportunities, especially research opportunities.
“The professionals at COSM have a great deal of knowledge and practical information that our faculty can analyze and employ in formal research documentation and study,” she said.

“In addition to gaining opportunities for professional growth, COSM physicians can use collected and carefully analyzed research findings to improve patient diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation,” she said.
IUP, because of its faculty knowledge and research setting, can conduct valuable research and disseminate results through individual and joint publications and presentations at academic and professional conferences, Zoni noted.

“The findings are likely to suggest new research areas, including projects for which grant funding is available,” she suggested. “Today many grant programs require consortia; IUP and COSM could form the nucleus of a consortium that could be far more successful in securing grants than either party would be alone,” she said.

IUP is a member of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education.