Burrell College reimagined

It was an institution that existed largely as an idea for John Hummer back in 2013. There was no campus, no capital, and certainly there were no students. There was, however, a problem to solve.

The Southwest needed more physicians, particularly in rural and underserved communities, and Hummer and osteopathic physician George Mychaskiw believed a new medical school in Las Cruces could help produce them. The two formed a partnership in July 2013, incorporated what was initially called the New Mexico College of Osteopathic Medicine and established an affiliation with New Mexico State University. Dan Burrell later provided the initial seed funding for the school that would carry his family's name.

Thirteen years later, Hummer can measure the results in numbers — 1,034 graduates, classes of 200 medical students in Las Cruces and another 100 at Burrell's Florida campus — but he prefers to measure it geographically.

"I always say we're putting pins on the map," said Hummer, Burrell's co-founder, president and CEO. "And those pins all represent a physician, an individual that believed in our mission, graduated, went off to a residency, and then went into those communities and are really transforming healthcare in those communities."

There are pins in Roswell, where Hummer said four Burrell graduates recently opened practices. There are others in Alamogordo, Albuquerque, Portales and Farmington, along with graduates who trained or continue to work at Las Cruces hospitals.

Now Burrell is preparing to alter the pins on that map. The Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine officially became the Burrell College of Health Sciences in June, a name change that reflects the most significant expansion of the institution since it welcomed its first medical school class in 2016. The college is now organized into two schools — the School of Osteopathic Medicine and the new School of Health Professions.

Its first new health professions program will be a Master of Health Science in Anesthesia, training certified anesthesiologist assistants, or CAAs, with Burrell planning to enroll its first class in January 2028. The change is less a departure from what Burrell was created to do than an expansion of it.

"It, from the earliest days of the development, was the vision to have more than just the College of Osteopathic Medicine," Hummer said.

Getting there, however, required more than changing the name on the building. Burrell's osteopathic medical program is accredited by the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation, or COCA, which had also served as the institution's accreditor. About six years ago, Burrell began the lengthy process of seeking separate institutional accreditation through the Higher Learning Commission, the same institutional accrediting organization used by NMSU.

Burrell received initial HLC accreditation in June 2025 for a 10-year term. That opened the door to something COCA accreditation alone did not: developing degree programs outside osteopathic medicine.

And when Burrell began deciding what should come first, Hummer said administrators didn't start by looking at what programs might be easiest to launch. They asked hospitals what they needed.

"As we start looking at new programs, the question we ask is, does it align with our mission to the communities that we're in and the hospitals that we work with, the physicians that we work with, the clinics that we work with?" Hummer said. "What are their needs first and foremost from a workforce perspective, and then how can we be a partner in developing that workforce?"

One answer kept coming back: anesthesia. Hospitals continue to struggle to find enough professionals to provide anesthesia care, Hummer said, a shortage that can have consequences far beyond staffing charts.

"At the end of the day, the worst thing to happen is to have an empty operating room and having patients wait to get operated on, and a surgeon waiting," he said.

Anesthesia care can be provided by several types of professionals. Physician anesthesiologists are MDs or DOs who specialize in anesthesia. Certified registered nurse anesthetists, or CRNAs, are advanced-practice nurses who can practice independently in some settings.

Certified anesthesiologist assistants are master's-level professionals who work as part of an anesthesia care team under the direction of an anesthesiologist.

CAAs have been part of American health care since the 1970s but are not authorized to practice in every state. New Mexico and Florida, the two states where Burrell operates campuses, both recognize the profession.

Hummer said the model is already well established in Florida, where Burrell's Melbourne campus opened to medical students in 2024. Hospitals there routinely have anesthesiologists, CRNAs and CAAs working together.

In New Mexico, the profession is less established. Hummer said Christus Health is among the health systems that has embraced CAAs, and he expects acceptance to grow as hospitals continue struggling to fill anesthesia positions.

"You can add up all the physician MDs, DOs that are anesthesiologists, CRNAs and CAAs and there's still a shortage," Hummer said. "There's enough opportunity and room for everybody."

There is also no shortage of students interested in entering the profession. Hummer said there are approximately 700 seats available nationally in CAA programs and about 6,000 applicants competing for them. Students typically come from a pre-medical background but choose a different career path in anesthesia.

Burrell's program has received approval from the Higher Learning Commission and is now going through programmatic accreditation. A self-study has been submitted, with a site visit expected next spring.

The classroom and simulation portions of the program will be based at Burrell's Florida campus, where the college is renovating another building. Clinical training will take place at sites in Florida, New Mexico and El Paso.

The college has also hired Michael Nichols as executive vice president, dean and chief academic officer of the new School of Health Professions. Nichols has more than 25 years of experience in clinical practice, health sciences education and program development and has previously helped develop anesthesia programs.

The anesthesia program won't be the only addition. Burrell also plans to begin a 10-month master's program in biomedical science in July 2028. Hummer said the program will provide another pathway toward medical school for students who may have fallen just short of admission requirements. Students who complete the program and meet specified academic benchmarks would receive automatic admission into Burrell's osteopathic medical program.

Beyond those two programs, Hummer isn't ready to put names or dates on what comes next.

Burrell is surveying its hospital partners and working with its Board of Trustees to identify other shortages in the regions it serves — New Mexico, Arizona and Texas in the Southwest and its newer service region in Florida.

"What I would say to the reader is when you look at other health care professional degrees and where there's a shortage of providers, most likely we're looking at that and we're evaluating that," Hummer said.

There is at least one thing at which Burrell isn't looking  Despite the continuing demand for nurses, Hummer said Burrell doesn't see a reason to duplicate programs already offered by NMSU, Doña Ana Community College and other institutions in New Mexico and El Paso.

"Even though there's a need for nurses, to put in another nursing program, we've pretty much come to that conclusion that that does not make sense," he said.

The approach reflects much the same calculation that led to Burrell's creation more than a decade ago: identify where the health care workforce is falling short and determine whether the college can help fill the gap.

The difference is that Burrell now has considerably more to from which to build. The institution's Las Cruces campus sits on land leased through its affiliation with NMSU. Hummer said the agreement reserves another seven acres behind the existing building for future expansion. Burrell also has the ability to expand its facilities in Florida, but Hummer said the expansion will be deliberate.

"When you start a new school of health professions, you've got to start with one program first," he said. "We're not getting too far ahead of our skis."

Hummer thinks back to what would have been difficult to imagine in 2013 — a college with campuses in two states, hundreds of students entering each year and more than 1,000 physicians already graduated. Ask him to look forward instead, and he sees another institution that may be difficult to imagine today.

"If you were to come back 20 years from now," Hummer said, "I think you'd be pleasantly surprised that we've been able to build additional degree programs."