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Building on Mase's Legacy
The UF College of Public Health and Health Professions is one of the largest and most diversified health education institutions in the nation. Established in 1958, the college was a prototype for health professions education and the first college of its kind located within a health center.
Dozens of administrators, faculty, staff and students have made the college what it is today, but to longtime PHHP leaders, the credit for the college's impressive beginnings can be attributed to founding dean Darrel Mase, Ph.D.
"Darrel was truly a man of vision," said PHHP Dean Emeritus Richard Gutekunst, Ph.D., in a lecture on the college's history. "In many ways, he was years ahead of his time when it came to educating health professionals.
"Darrel's dream was that the center would someday become a college with the same academic structure as the other health colleges - Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Dentistry," Gutekunst added.
As plans for the UF Health Science Center started to take shape, Mase spent many hours researching the state's need for health professionals. He discovered that no other academic programs for occupational therapy existed in the Southeast and the nearest physical therapy program was located at Duke University.
Although Mase successfully made the case for academic programs in occupational therapy, physical therapy and medical technology and received approval from the university senate, the college's name became a heated issue.
"The senate approved the name as the College of Related Health Arts," Gutekunst said. "Darrel did not like this title, but he accepted it and believed he could change it at the first opportunity. He proposed to the president and other deans that it be called the College of Associated Health Professions. One of the deans pounded the president's desk and said 'We're not going to let Darrel call things like physical therapy, occupational therapy and medical technology professions.'"
Rather than lose the concept, Mase withdrew his request and suggested the name College of Health Related Services. Being the savvy administrator he was, Mase revisited the issue when the dean who objected to "professions" in the title was on a year's sabbatical, and was able to change the college's name to College of Health Related Professions.
Over the ensuing years, the college has added several more academic programs, graduated 9,000 students and places first or second in National Institutes of Health research funding for colleges of health professions. The college took another innovative step in 2003 when it expanded its offerings to include public health programs, which ushered in another name change - the College of Public Health and Health Professions.