What does a 1970s Houston choir teacher have to do with the $300 million health science center proposed for downtown Wichita?
Quite a bit, as it turns out.
Wichita State University President Rick Muma was in eighth grade, sitting in choir class in the Houston public schools, when his teacher announced he would be leaving to become a physician assistant — a relatively new career at that time.
Muma went on to become a PA himself. He eventually earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston — located at the Texas Medical Center, which serves as a kind of a model for the proposed center he’s championing here.