A Boost for Healthcare Talent

New Mel and Enid Zuckerman Center for Health and Medical Careers and Potoff Private Philanthropy Veterinary Science Center

By Jay Gonzales

When the ribbon was cut last fall on a pivotal new center at Pima Joint Technical Education District, it was a tribute to the foresight, timing and generosity needed to help bolster our regional workforce. 

Pima JTED celebrated the Oct. 4 opening with words from many of those contributors, including the donors who gave $17 million to help fund the project.

Officially, the new building, on the Pima JTED campus at 3300 S. Park Ave. in The Bridges commercial development, has two names to honor its donors. The Mel and Enid Zuckerman Center for Health and Medical Careers and the Potoff Private Philanthropy Veterinary Science Center is a 52,000-square-foot facility that will increase the region’s capacity to recruit young people into careers where talent is dramatically short, not only here, but nationally.

Studies forecast a shortage of healthcare workers over the next several years well into the hundreds of thousands. That was not lost on Pima JTED, which was seeing a huge demand for the healthcare programs it had already been providing.

In 2019, Pima JTED was still a year away from opening its main career center where it offers a wide range of technical education programs from auto and aviation technology to information technology. But there was already recognition that a dedicated facility for healthcare training was needed.

“We started to realize that the popularity of this location was such that we knew the demand for our programming at this location would be even greater than it was back when we opened the building in 2020,” said Kathy Prather, Pima JTED superintendent and CEO.

Working with then-University of Arizona President Dr. Robert Robbins − a heart surgeon who formerly ran the University of Texas Medical Center − Pima JTED and its supporters embarked on a fact-finding mission to determine what a healthcare training facility should look like and if it would work in Tucson.

Robbins directed them to the Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions in Houston.

“He said he couldn’t believe that with the College of Medicine and the College of Public Health here at the UA, that Tucson did not have a high-school-level facility to feed into those colleges,” Prather said.

After a trip to DeBakey High School that included Pima JTED board members, Robbins and others from UA and Pima Community College, Prather said, “We all decided that this was something we should do here.”

What caught Prather by surprise was how quickly funding came together so the building could be up and running in fall 2024.

“We started putting out to the community that we were intending to build a health and medical career center school and the community responded,” she said. “What we thought would be five or six years actually was less than two years.”

The Mel and Enid Zuckerman family gave $5 million to the project. Government funding came in through U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, at a total of $5.7 million. The Connie Hillman Family Foundation, Potoff Private Philanthropy, longtime Tucson car dealer and philanthropist Jim Click, and the Thomas R. Brown Family Private Foundation were also major contributors.

The builders were Bourn Companies and BFL Construction in a joint partnership.

“We have an industry that is telling us we need more talent,” Prather said. “We have a talent shortage, and it’s going to get even more concerning in many areas, not just healthcare. But with healthcare, we had this momentum for the school and so many of our community members stepped up and said, ‘We want to help.’”

“My grandparents have been committed to promoting healthy lifestyles and disease prevention for 45 years,” Nicole Zuckerman Morris said at the ribbon cutting. She is the granddaughter of Mel and Enid Zuckerman.

“Before my grandfather passed away, Amy (the Zuckerman’s daughter) and I were able to share with him that we were working with JTED to help open a new campus to support more people pursuing careers in the healthcare field. We could tell how proud he was of this project and the continuation of his and my grandmother’s mission.”