Winters Leaves Allied Health College Prepared for Future

By Jon Parham

 Dean Ronald Winters, Ph.D., speaks at the 2009 opening of the new College of Health Related Professions site.
Dean Ronald Winters, Ph.D., speaks
at the 2009 opening of the new
College of Health Related Professions site.

Feb. 1, 2011 | For 28 years, Ronald Winters, Ph.D., has guided the UAMS College of Health Related Professions with a thorough preciseness that also allowed for creativity and wit.

When he retires as dean Feb. 14, he will have used those traits to leave the college prepared for the critical role the allied health professions have in addressing the shortage of health care workers in Arkansas and nationally.

Winters draws praise from colleagues for his unceasing commitment to the college and his formal nature but also for his accessibility and how he cares for students and faculty alike.

Under his watch, the college evolved from a handful of programs spread over several locations on and off the UAMS campus to a more united organization with certificate and degree programs in 17 professions. Enrollment during his time has nearly tripled to 665 students in the 2010-2011 school year.

“It has been a fantastic opportunity,” the California native said about opting to stay in Arkansas to guide the college through almost three decades. “This is a dynamic place where creative things are done to solve problems.”

The Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions recognized Winters in 2009 for his career accomplishments with its Legacy of Excellence Award. The organization, which represents 116 schools of allied health across the nation, presented Winters with its President’s Award in 2000 and recognized him as an outstanding member by the group’s board of directors in 1998.

“Through his career, Dr. Winters has been rightly recognized for his dedication and commitment to academic health care at the state and national level,” said UAMS Chancellor Dan Rahn, M.D. “Dr. Winters has developed and nurtured the allied health programs to meet emerging and current health care needs across Arkansas. We are grateful for his service.”

During Winters’ tenure, the college has been a leader in using distance education, making many of its programs available to students from all over Arkansas and outside the state. Today, two-thirds of the college’s students are taking at least one course through distance education.

“He has always been very creative in terms of approaching challenges,” said Erna Boone, director of the respiratory care program and chairman of the college’s Department of Respiratory and Surgical Technologies. She pointed to his support of distance education and establishing numerous partnerships with other schools to expand CHRP programs.

Technology has been a major catalyst for the college’s growth and a reason why he expects the growth to continue, Winters said.

Paul Thaxton, director for the Division of Nuclear Medicine Imaging Sciences in the college’s Department of Imaging and Radiation Sciences praised Winters’ support for expanding the nuclear medicine programs – among other programs – through online and distance education. The program has evolved from students attending classes on the UAMS campus in Little Rock to as many as 50 students from five states taking classes online and completing their clinical experience without leaving their hometowns.

Winters said distance education was necessary and critical for the college because many students could not afford to leave home and come to UAMS full time. “We made the conscious decision to take the programs to them,” he said.

Even as the college reached outward to its students, Winters pushed to give it something it has lacked: a common site for most of its programs. In 2009, the college moved into a new home: a series of renovated buildings formerly part of the Arkansas State Hospital adjacent to UAMS.

“I know it drove him crazy that our programs were so spread out,” Boone said. “He really fought for us to have this facility.”

Said Diane Skinner, Ed.D., the college’s associate dean for academic and student affairs: “He advocated for a long time for the space that would enable the college to be together.”

Thaxton added that Winters worked “countless hours on planning for the facility and overseeing the renovations.”

Boone was already at UAMS when Winters arrived in 1982. She credited him with uniting a collection of programs spread across several locations on and off the UAMS campus in purpose – even if they could not be together at the same place.

“Before Dr. Winters arrived, we didn’t really have much cohesiveness as a college,” Boone said, noting the college only had one faculty meeting annually before Winters took over. “He impressed on us the importance of structure, as individual programs were shifted to a more departmental organization.

“He really created a culture for the college of community and collegiality.”

Skinner described his leadership style as “fair minded and very thorough.” Others described him as precise and one who paid careful attention to details.

“He sets a high standard but he encourages and works with others to achieve high standards,” Skinner said.

As Skinner describes it, he is aware of his role as a dean and administrator – carrying himself with a dignified and serious demeanor. “But he loves to tell stories and is very funny,” she said of his dry wit.

Winters is fond of noting that those working in the allied health professions account for roughly half of the people working in health care today. That’s a trend that will continue, he said, because the increasing complexity of health care tools is creating new professions and making the allied health professionals more critical.

With the growth of the elderly population, demand for health care is expected to continue increasing. People aged 65 and older represented 12.4 percent of the nation’s population in the year 2000 but are expected to grow to be 19 percent of the population (about 72 million people) by 2030.

Winters said physicians will be able to see more patients by partnering with professions such as radiologist assistants and nuclear medicine advanced associates who can perform some of the routine diagnostic testing for them.

“We’re already seeing shortages of physicians and I suspect it will get worse before it gets better, so there is going to be a high demand for people who can assist health care providers,” Winters said.

Following his retirement, Winters said he intends to stay in Arkansas, which has become home to him. He and his wife, who continues to work as a pharmacist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, will do some traveling, he said.

He also plans to pursue his interests in foreign languages, astronomy and antique automobiles along with some public and professional service.