PHOENIX - Northern Arizona University will launch two health-care programs on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus.
The Arizona Republic reports that the Flagstaff university will open physician assistant and physical therapy programs at the Health Sciences Education Building now under construction in downtown Phoenix.
Students will start their course work and training in the fall.
The university signed an agreement in 2004 with the University of Arizona and Arizona State University to create the Phoenix campus. The three had planned to share the campus so they could develop collaborative health-care and science programs that would complement each other and possibly lead to the launch of new areas of study.
Arizona State formally backed away from the agreement last spring, citing tight finances.
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The first crop of students in the Northern Arizona programs will be limited.
Twenty-five students will be in the university's inaugural class in the physician assistant program in Phoenix, while the physical therapy program will accept 24 students.
Students enrolled in Northern Arizona's physician assistant program are working toward a master's-level degree, which, after they're licensed, enables them to practice medicine under the supervision of physicians and surgeons.
The NAU program at Phoenix will have an emphasis on accepting applicants from smaller cities in Arizona, with the goal of encouraging them to return to rural communities.
