{"id":62706,"date":"2022-01-13T08:11:22","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T14:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=62706"},"modified":"2022-01-13T08:11:24","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T14:11:24","slug":"fhsu-welcomes-new-medical-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=62706","title":{"rendered":"FHSU welcomes new medical director"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By UNIVERSITY RELATIONS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Jeffery \u201cJeff\u201d Curtis, MD, has joined the Health and Wellness Services team at Fort Hays State University as its new medical director. He replaces Dr. Dallas Richards, who served as medical director for 30 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Curtis oversees medical clinic operations and\nworks closely with campus academic and student affairs partners to support\nstudent wellness, health, and safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe are honored that Dr. Curtis chose to come\nhome to FHSU and continue his remarkable career in medicine at his alma mater,\u201d\nFHSU President Tisa Mason said. \u201cHe is the epitome of the engaged global\ncitizen that is the hallmark of so many of our graduates. For more than 20\nyears, he has provided invaluable leadership, generosity, and service as an\nFHSU Foundation Executive Board member.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Curtis\u2019 ties to Fort Hays State are deep and\nspan decades and generations in his family. His father and mother attended FHSU\nand were married on the same day they graduated in 1950. As a boy, Curtis grew\nup a block from the FHSU campus and spent many days playing football and\nbasketball on the Tiger football practice field and in Sheridan Coliseum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After graduating from Fort Hays State in 1977,\nCurtis went on to earn his medical degree from the University of Kansas School\nof Medicine. He then completed a fellowship in cardiovascular disease at the\nUniversity of North Carolina School of Medicine. Very\nearly in his medical career, Curtis was a 1987 recipient of the FHSU Alumni\nAssociation\u2019s Young Alumni Award.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1988, he and his wife Connie decided to\nreturn to Kansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to come home to a place we are\ncomfortable, a place where family comes first,\u201c &nbsp;Curtis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the time, there was no opportunity for\nCurtis to practice cardiology in Hays, so the family settled in Topeka, where\nit spent the next 14 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When an opportunity opened at Hays Medical\nCenter in 2002, Curtis was able to bring his family to Hays. He worked as a\ncardiologist and director of cardiology services at HaysMed for the next 19\nyears and retired in August 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been a privilege to practice medicine for\ntwo decades in the town where I grew up,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve never needed to attend\nany high school or homecoming events, because my job kept me connected to\nlifelong friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As he began to look for his next\nprofessional challenge after retirement, Curtis found FHSU\u2019s new integrated\nHealth and Wellness Services model particularly appealing. He plans to draw on\nthe experience of nurse practitioners, nurses, and other clinical professionals\nas he learns&nbsp;more about&nbsp;the new approach to&nbsp;wellness. He also\nlooks forward to sharing his extensive medical knowledge as a teacher in the\nclinic and the university\u2019s nursing program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A long-serving member of the FHSU\nFoundation\u2019s executive committee, Curtis currently serves as the Nominating\nCommittee Chair for the Foundation. He is also a Wooster Society member, a\n20-year donor, and a Leadership Circle member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeffery and Connie Curtis are the parents of\nthree, including son Christian, a graduate student at FHSU; daughter Cathryn, a graduate of the FHSU BSN nursing program and a graduate\nin the first class of BSN to DNP doctorate of nursing practice program.\nShe currently serves as a nurse practitioner at HaysMed\u2019s Family Medicine\nClinic. Son Carter passed away in 2020. Cathryn and her husband, A.J. Preisner,\nare the parents of Jeffery and Connie\u2019s four grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By UNIVERSITY RELATIONS Dr. Jeffery \u201cJeff\u201d Curtis, MD, has joined the Health and Wellness Services team at Fort Hays State University as its new medical&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62707,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62706\/revisions\/62707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}