In June of 2023, Lori Fauquher stepped into her current role as the director of the physician assistant (PA) program.
“I'm responsible for building the entire program, curriculum, all aspects of the program, hiring faculty and staff and overseeing them for the program,” Fauquher said.
Although the PA program is still in its early stages, Fauquher and her colleagues have put in significant effort to secure its accreditation.
President Michael Lindsay announced the physician assistant program in a university update on Oct. 1.
“Our new Physician Assistant program has been approved by the Higher Learning Commission, and the program just completed its first site visit by ARC-PA,” Lindsay said.
ARC-PA will announce the results in March; until then, Taylor is still awaiting accreditation. However, they are currently accepting applications for the first class for Fall 2025.
Taylor has stated that if the program is not granted provisional accreditation, students will not be able to enroll, and their admission deposits will be fully refunded.
Although Fauquher is optimistic the program is going to get off the ground smoothly, there are still some nerves.
“I'll go back to following God's timing and leaning into that,” Fauquher said, “I also think that we know that ARC-PA is strict, so no matter the outcome we're going to keep working, and we're very prayerful that we'll get a positive decision in March.”
With the new fully accredited nursing program starting up in Spring 2025, and hopes of the same for the PA program in Fall 2025, Taylor is diving deep into the healthcare field.
“Having both types of programs allows us to work together in some of those educational things and to have some joint experiences,” Dean of Nursing, Karen Elsea said.
Elsea said there have already been conversations between the two departments to see what types of collaboration there can be.
One focus for the university is determining how to accommodate the growing number of graduate students on campus.
“That has taken some planning and lots of conversations across campus with myself, our PA team and all the entities that support students on campus, anywhere from admissions to the library to financial aid to the registrar and the bursar offices,” Fauquher said.
Currently, the PA team consists of three full-time principal staff members, Pete Edgar, Stephanie Inman and Jonathan Byers who are all assistant professors of PA studies.
These three will be doing most of the teaching but the whole team includes many other people who have all been working very hard to ensure that this program is successful.
Fauquher is very excited about the three unique parts of the program: Biblical integration of medicine, service focus and lifestyle medicine.
“I am excited about the opportunity to connect with Taylor's undergraduate spirit already in that area and continue to improve what medicine looks like,” Fauquher said.
Fauquher said she and her team have a passion and heart for this and are excited to see what happens with this program.
