Rochester, Minnesota has one of the highest per capita physician to population ratios in the country. Home to the Mayo Clinic, it benefits from the prosperity and diversity of its anchor institution, consistently rated the best hospital in the world. In 2009, the city strengthened its distinction as “America’s City for Health” when it launched a research university that would complement Mayo Clinic’s medical research enterprise and meet its ongoing workforce needs. The community appears to be getting all that and more with the University of Minnesota Rochester (UMR) – an innovative learning environment that centers equity and wellbeing as it takes on healthcare’s grand challenges. 

“Building a major university here, particularly one focused on health care, has been so important to the fabric of this city,” said Mayor Kim Norton. “I am so proud of the work that they do and the success they have had with their students.” 

UMR opened its doors to its first 57 students in 2009 after a multi-year effort among community leaders brought a regional branch of the University of Minnesota to town. It has grown to nearly 1,000 students who prepare to enter a variety of health-related fields, clinical, technical, and administrative. Two-thirds of the students are in at least one category that would be considered historically underrepresented. This fall, nearly 50% of the student population will be BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color). 

Bringing more students of color into the medical professions is one of the goals of the UMR/Mayo Clinic partnership which hopes to provide a stronger pathway to medical careers as it diversifies a health care workforce that serves patients from around the world. “We have a strong focus on diversity, equity and inclusion here to make sure we represent all of society and that our patients can see themselves in their caregivers,” said Karen Helfinstine, Mayo Clinic’s Vice Chair of Education Administration. “Our partnership with UMR is critical to cultivating the workforce of the future.”

From the university side of the partnership, Mayo Clinic provides the promise of a good career for its students as well as an opportunity to foster an educational environment leading to flourishing in life and work. The teaching hospital adjacent to the university has built-in opportunities for experiential learning, research and mentorships — educational experiences that have proven to lead to improved wellbeing — and all part of UMR’s innovative, student-centered learning environment. 

The university’s motto is simple and forthcoming, aptly describing the building blocks that have led to its early success. “Students are at the center. Research informs practice. Partners make it possible.” Lori Carrell is UMR’s Chancellor and its passionate champion. It is clear she views the world through an asset-based lens, believing starting from scratch is an opportunity for innovation, just as students who have struggled possess valuable qualities. 

The teaching hospital adjacent to the university has built-in opportunities for experiential learning, research and mentorships

“One of the things that our students have in common is that they have persevered through major challenges in childhood or and adolescence,” she said. “There’s a resilience element we have the privilege of seeing in admissions. If a student can describe how their perseverance has been a catalyst for their passion to make a difference in the world through a career in health, we believe them to be well equipped for the rigor and compassion of this work.” 

A communications scholar who has published books on the need for change in higher education, Carrell says the methods they were experimenting with at UMR are what attracted her to it in 2014, when she first became Vice Chancellor. One of the university’s founding principles is a unique research mission where every faculty member does their primary research on student learning and student development regardless of their own subject matter expertise. 

“One of the great misses in higher education is we do not apply educational research or neuroscience about learning to how we structure college degrees or college life,” she said. “At UMR, we had a blank canvas to do that. Our faculty are in one interdisciplinary department called the Center for Learning Innovation. They demonstrate teaching excellence by providing evidence of learning and they progress in their careers by doing research on student learning and student development.” 

Andrew Petzold is a biology professor at UMR and, like Carrell, was drawn to the school because of its innovative teaching environment. “We are really in the trenches collecting data on the educational process and what students are actually learning and we use that to better inform our teaching in the future,” he said. “The interest is in student success rather than just publishing anything we possibly can.” 

Petzold says that the interdisciplinary focus on educational research leads to joint scholarship as well as active, student-centered classrooms. “We all have our own disciplinary focus, but I can talk and collaborate with other faculty in a much easier way because we all have a background in educational research.” 

UMR’s unique teaching environment has been highly recognized within the system and beyond. In its short history, seven UMR faculty members received the Horace T. Morse-University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education. But fans of UMR’s research-embedded learning are quick to acknowledge the importance of pairing great teaching with proven student success strategies, many included in AAC&U’s high impact practices. Every student at UMR has a student success coach. With a ratio of one to 80, “success coaches” help with everything from flagging academic struggles to connecting people to internships to making sure students are focusing on their wellbeing. Graduating students joke that their student success coaches are what they most want to take with them when they go. 

“These kinds of personal connections are where the sense of belonging comes from,” Carrell said. “‘I am connected to somebody and I matter here, so I can be ok even on really hard days.’” 

UMR’s health majors are academically rigorous and can be challenging for some students. For this reason, the campus launched with a “JustASK” program which is important to active learning and made possible by the openness and collaborative nature of the faculty. “There are no lectures here,” said Carrell. “Our instruction is active and experiential so students have to be prepared to do project work in the classroom and they have to have access to faculty if they need help,” she said. Instead of office hours, which many students don’t utilize, UMR faculty sit out in open spaces as an interdisciplinary team at JustASK so someone is available to help with a question or concern. 

“These kinds of personal connections are where the sense of belonging comes from. I am connected to somebody and I matter here, so I can be ok even on really hard days.”

Perhaps the most notable outcome of UMR’s evidence-based learning practices is the fact that the university has all but eliminated the achievement gap between underrepresented students and other students. . This outcome is something the campus community is very proud of but does not take for granted. She says building on UMR’s early success with students will take vigilance and a comprehensive approach which includes addressing one of the biggest barriers to a college degree for underrepresented students – affordability. Here, UMR and Mayo Clinic are leading the way with an innovative partnership called “NXT GEN MED.” 

In December of 2024, the first class of NXT GEN MED students will graduate with a degree from the University of Minnesota within 2.5 years. The accelerated degree program for students interested in non-patient care careers has taken the traditional eight semester bachelors degree and applied it to a yearly calendar, lessening overall costs for students who are also given scholarship money if they are eligible. The partnership with Mayo Clinic includes a paid, credit-bearing internship, a Mayo Clinic mentor as well as a student success coach and research experience. As a result, UMR students are well positioned for employment upon graduation, either at the Mayo Clinic or in other institutions.

“What has been so beautiful about this partnership is hearing from the students how meaningful these experiences have been for them,” said Mayo Clinic’s Karen Helfinstine.

The program is an early example of a movement to create undergraduate degree options that increase student success while decreasing student cost known as “College-in-3.” Chancellor Carrell is a national leader in this area and views her advocacy as an extension of her work to revitalize the sector. When it comes to higher education challenges, Carrell says there are two for which there is little disagreement: college costs too much and many students who start do not complete. “College-in-3” programs are meant to address both of these problems at once, with evidence-based curricular designs. 

“These programs are not about lopping something off, they’re about crafting something better. You’ve got three years. How do you design research-embedded, experiential, transformative learning that leads to human flourishing? That’s the opportunity.”