A three-way partnership between Newman University, Garden City Community College and CommonSpirit Health is bringing a critical new healthcare degree to rural Kansas
Newman University was established in 1933 to meet a community need – educating young women to teach in local Catholic schools. More than 92 years later, Newman is still focused on its mission to serve. The latest example is helping fill a heath care gap in Southwest Kansas.
Residents in the region depend on local hospitals for some of the most important moments of their lives — a pregnancy ultrasound, a cardiac scan and more. But for years, the professionals trained to perform those scans have been in critically short supply.
That is beginning to change.
Newman University and Garden City Community College announced on Feb. 18 the launch of a new Bachelor of Science in Diagnostic Medical Sonography — a program that will train the next wave of imaging professionals and place them in the communities that need them most. The degree, offered through Newman’s HERE program in partnership with CommonSpirit Health, will welcome its first cohort this fall.
Before a single class had been scheduled, 41 people had already applied.
“With the addition of this new program, students in Southwest Kansas will have the opportunity to learn the high-demand skills needed to provide quality care to their local communities. Just as importantly, this effort will help to retain Kansas talent and make certain that young students who want to pursue careers in health care can achieve that success right here at home.”
– U.S. Senator Jerry Moran
Meeting a major need in the region
Jason Justus knows the shortage firsthand. As president of St. Catherine Hospital in Garden City, St. Catherine Hospital in Dodge City and Bob Wilson Memorial Hospital in Ulysses, he oversees healthcare facilities serving a wide stretch of western Kansas. When he describes the need for trained sonographers, he doesn’t talk in abstract numbers. He talks in counties.
“If you think about just southwest Kansas and the 17 to 19 counties that you can include in there, each one of those counties have a hospital,” Justus said. “Each one of those counties will need this type of individual.”
Sonographers — also known as diagnostic medical sonographers or ultrasound technologists — are among the most essential and hardest-to-find professionals in rural healthcare. They operate the equipment that produces the images physicians rely on to detect heart disease, monitor pregnancies, diagnose abdominal conditions and identify vascular problems. Without them, those diagnostic services either disappear or patients must travel hours to access them.
The new Newman degree addresses that gap directly. Graduates will be prepared to pursue careers as diagnostic medical sonographers, ultrasound technologists, echocardiographers, vascular sonographers, OB/GYN sonographers, musculoskeletal sonographers and travel ultrasound technologists — filling roles across the hospital system, local clinics and beyond.
Building an innovative model to serve rural areas
Getting a sonography program off the ground in a rural community is a challenge.
The challenge is clinical rotations. Healthcare education programs require students to spend significant time training in real medical settings under qualified supervision. The traditional model for securing those clinical placements was built for large metropolitan areas, where hospitals are plentiful and concentrated. In a region like southwest Kansas — where the next hospital might be 40 miles away — that model simply doesn’t translate.
“Healthcare programs are always limited by clinical rotations, and the model is actually built for metropolitan areas more than rural communities,” said Alden Stout, Newman’s Vice President of Academic Affairs. “But we created a way to do it in rural hospitals and find a way to provide all the clinical training through partnership and collaboration.”
That solution was months in the making. It required each partner to think creatively about what was possible, rather than defaulting to what had been done before.
“It took a lot of partnership, discussion, collaboration and innovation because we had to bring everybody on board with the same vision,” Stout said. “The needs were clear, but the solutions weren’t as obvious.”
The result is a program unlike anything currently available in the region. Students will complete their prerequisites and early coursework at Garden City Community College (GCCC), then advance into Newman’s bachelor’s program — with a curriculum that is largely hybrid and online, making it accessible to students who can’t relocate. Clinical rotations will run through CommonSpirit’s hospital network and partner clinics across western Kansas. And in a detail that sets this program apart even from Newman’s Wichita campus: the lab itself will be physically housed at CommonSpirit’s Garden City hospital facility, so students learn, rotate and train in one place.
When Stout described the model to a colleague in higher education, the reaction was disbelief.
“They were shocked,” he said. “They wondered, how did you do that? And when you have the right partners, when you care about your community and when you’re committed to innovation, those things can happen.”
– Alden Stout – VP for Academic Affairs, Newman University
“We created a way to do it in rural hospitals and find a way to provide all the clinical training through partnership and collaboration. And then we’re opening a program that right now its target is actually to be as large as the Wichita program.”
A partnership that keeps growing
The sonography announcement is not the beginning of a story. It is the latest chapter in one that has been unfolding for more than three years.
Newman and GCCC launched their partnership to bring 4-year bachelor programs to the region with three programs. Today, with sonography (fall 2026) and radiology (fall 2027) now in the pipeline, the total reaches ten — and 23 students have already earned their bachelor’s degrees through the collaboration, with 33 more currently enrolled.
Dr. Ryan Ruda, president of Garden City Community College, admits the growth has outpaced even his own ambitions for what the partnership could become.
“Quite frankly, (I’m) blown away,” Ruda said. “To see it be able to blossom from the three initial programs to where we have had eight currently and adding two more with sonography and radiology — it’s been beyond our expectations as far as the impact and the benefits derived from this partnership.”
For Stout, the growth reflects something more important than a program count. He says it is proof of what distinguishes a strategic partnership from a transactional one.
“When you engage in a transactional partnership, you might add one program and you might do one thing, but it doesn’t build on itself,” he said. “This strategic partnership is finding new opportunities, ways to work together and the momentum continues to build because new opportunities come to the fore that we didn’t realize before,” Stout said.
Justus echoed that sentiment from CommonSpirit’s vantage point, framing the expansion of the partnership as a direct expression of the health system’s commitment to the communities it serves — not as a distant national organization, but as a local partner with local stakes.
“Nobody has enough money. Nobody has enough marketing materials or big enough signs to be able to do it on their own,” Justus said at the announcement. “Which means you have to have partners. And to be able to rely on local partners like this to bring new services to the community is outstanding.”
A world-class healthcare degree for as little as $750 a year
The program is designed to remove as many barriers as possible. Students can complete the two-year degree while remaining in their home communities, with strong online components supplementing the in-person clinical experience. And with scholarships and grants available through Newman, the total cost of the program can be as low as $750 per year.
That price point matters in a region where the cost of relocating to pursue a degree has long been a deciding factor for students who want a career in healthcare but cannot leave the communities where they work and raise families.
“We’ve had a lot of students over the years asking about sonography and radiology programming,” Ruda said. “Now where they can be able to come and complete their prerequisites and do a lot of their initial coursework at Garden City only provides benefits for us as they transition to Newman as well.”
The clinical experience students receive will match what Newman provides on its Wichita campus. The first year focuses on instruction; the second on hands-on training in real hospital and clinical settings. Students will rotate through CommonSpirit facilities and local health clinics across the broader western Kansas region, graduating not just with a degree but with hours of supervised, real-world experience.
“What you find is … ready, willing and capable staff that can join your organization and really jump right in,” Justus said. “And they’re going to be highly skilled, highly competent and for healthcare, that’s a win.”
The home field advantage
The workforce calculus of rural healthcare is unforgiving. When a community cannot train professionals locally, those professionals leave for cities where opportunities are concentrated. When they leave, the community often loses not just talent but care. Patients who once received imaging services in their hometown are redirected to facilities farther away — or go without.
The HERE model is designed, in part, to break that cycle.
“More students are staying local, which means now more students can work local,” Justus said. “For us, from a CommonSpirit standpoint, that means a lot because more patients can stay at home here in our local communities.”
Ruda framed it similarly: the value of the partnership is not just what GCCC can provide its students, but what those students provide to southwest Kansas when they stay.
“The only way that we can be responsive in helping to address those needs is through partnerships like this with Newman,” he said. “While it may not be Garden City Community College’s program, we are responding to what the needs of the community are.”
Stout, who said he feels “like I’m back with some of my people” every time he crosses the Finney County line, offered perhaps the most pointed summary of what is at stake.
“It educates students, it provides opportunity for a great career path that those students can embark on. It allows the partnership between the three institutions to work seamlessly, and it gives greater workforce flexibility for the hospital and then improves the healthcare outcomes in Garden City,” Stout said. “I think Michael Scott from The Office calls that a win-win-win. I think that’s exactly what it is.”
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“More students are staying local, which means now more students can work local. And for us, from a CommonSpirit standpoint, that means a lot because more patients can stay at home here in our local communities.”
— Jason Justus, President
St. Catherine Hospital – Garden City, St. Catherine Hospital – Dodge City and Bob Wilson Memorial Hospital in Ulysses
Educating students to transform society
For Newman University, the announcement is not simply a new addition to the course catalog. It is an expression of a mission that has shaped the institution since its founding in 1933.
“For Newman, this is part of our mission,” Stout said. “What we want to do is educate our students to transform society, and one of the ways they do that is by providing service, providing healthcare services, providing patient care. It’s part of the longstanding programs we’ve had at Newman.”
Healthcare education has been central to Newman for decades — from nursing and respiratory therapy on the Wichita campus to the expanding across the state. The sonography program in Garden City extends that tradition into new geography and a new modality, with the same commitment to forming professionals who are as prepared for the human dimensions of care as they are for its technical demands.
“We strive to empower all of our students through a high quality education and those values are exemplified in this partnership with Garden City Community College and CommonSpirit Health,” Stout said in the official announcement. “Students are provided all necessary instruction, tools and experience to learn and grow their medical career right here in Garden City.”
Radiology on the horizon — and more to come
Sonography is not the end of the road. Pending accreditation, Newman and its partners plan to add a radiologic technology program as the next step in the partnership expansion — building on the same infrastructure, the same clinical relationships and the same model that made sonography possible.
Beyond radiology, Stout is careful not to overpromise — but he is also not inclined to underestimate what opportunities this partnership is capable of providing.
“If you asked me three and a half years ago where we would be, I don’t think I would have said where we are,” he said. “What I would say as concrete next steps is we do need to add the radiology component. And then we need to work further on other healthcare programs and options.”
The guiding principle, he said, is simple: keep listening.
“The best way to move forward is by listening to the community. When you listen to the community, you understand their needs and then you build the partnerships and the workforce for them,” Stout said. “So we’re going to keep listening, keep looking for opportunities and keep finding ways to serve the students and the community out here in southwest Kansas.”
About the Newman HERE program
Newman HERE is a joint partnership between Newman University and southwest Kansas community colleges – in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal – that brings bachelor’s degree completion programs directly to students in their home communities.
At Garden City Community College, students can complete prerequisites and lower-division coursework before advancing into Newman’s bachelor’s programs — remaining in southwest Kansas throughout.
Over the next year and a half, the program is growing to ten degree offerings and since it began the partnership has helped 23 students earn their bachelor’s degrees, with 33 more currently enrolled.
Sonography in Garden City
While earning a sonography degree, students are trained to be highly skilled medical professionals that perform diagnostic ultrasound testing under the supervision of a physician.
