Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1372819
7 Kansas Legislature acquires the former E.B. Allen Hospital and designates it as the permanent home of the medical school and appropriates funding for the building's renovation. Family Practice Residency program at Smoky Hill Clinic in Salina is accredited. 1979 1979 William Reals, M.D., becomes third dean. 1980 Fairmount Towers (demolished in 2018) served its intended purpose, although sharing a building with undergraduate students presented its own challenges. "Something we used to joke about was that you could smell a lot of marijuana in the elevators," Valentine said. "We were in tight quarters," said RoxAnn Dicker, who worked in outreach and became associate dean for community aairs, "These were dorm rooms, not oces. My file cabinets were in a bathtub." As department chairs and other sta were added, the school oces eventually occupied the third floor of Fairmount Towers as well. Meanwhile, at the same time WSU was clearing ground for a medical school building on its campus, discussions were taking place about another possible home: E.B. Allen Hospital at Kansas and Ninth streets, the 100-bed county hospital that had served low-income patients, plus some suering from alcoholism and mental illness, since 1953. Passage of Medicare and Medicaid legislation in the mid-1960s meant those patients could be cared for in regular hospitals. By the early 1970s, the county was anxious to cease operating the hospital at a cost of $55,000 a month. The building's central location — "splitting the dierence" between hospitals where students would +30.00 FT People had oces in a living room, a bedroom. There'd be a couple of desks, you'd be back to back to each other facing the wall. Lorene Valentine, KUSM-W Director of Rural Health Education & Services from modest start