Berry College has named two local medical professionals to join its developing Physician Associate Program.
Dr. Ryan Stanger will be the program’s Medical Director and Dr. Robert King will serve as Area Clinical Education Director, both on a part-time basis.
King is a board-certified otolaryngologist at Harbin Clinic Ear, Nose & Throat in Rome, Calhoun and Cartersville. He earned a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame and his M.D. from St. Louis University School of Medicine. He both interned in general surgery and completed his residency in otolaryngology, head & neck surgery at Loyola University Medical Center. King has worked at Harbin Clinic since 2004.
Stanger is a board-certified anesthesiologist and is employed by AdventHealth Redmond in Rome. He earned his B.S. in applied biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, his M.Ed. in clinical exercise physiology from the University of Georgia, and his M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia. Stanger did his residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed a fellowship in cardiothoracic anesthesiology at Emory University. He has worked at Redmond since 2011.
The Medical Director works with the PA Program Director to develop policies and curriculum, ensure compliance for accreditation, and support the recruitment of clinical instructional faculty.
The Area Clinical Education Director helps to recruit, develop, and retain clinical stakeholder relationships, clinical sites, clinical instructional faculty and rotations at the local and regional levels. The director serves as an advocate for the program within local and regional medical communities and help to ensure that students’ supervised clinical practice experiences meet current practice standards.
Berry plans to welcome the first class of PA students in 2025. Pending the accreditation process, Berry will offer a two-year Master of Medical Science—Physician Associate degree. To house the new program and Berry’s growing BSN nursing program, the college will build a $25 million, 36,000-square-foot Health Sciences Building.
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Additional information: The Berry College Master of Medical Science - Physician Associate Program will apply for Substantive Change approval from The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges in the fall of 2023. Berry College has applied for Accreditation-Provisional from the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA). Berry anticipates matriculating its first class in August 2025, pending achieving Accreditation-Provisional status at the March 2025 ARC-PA meeting. Accreditation-Provisional is an accreditation status granted when the plans and resource allocation, if fully implemented as planned, of a proposed program that has not yet enrolled students appear to demonstrate the program’s ability to meet the ARC-PA Standards or when a program holding accreditation-provisional status appears to demonstrate continued progress in complying with the Standards as it prepares for the graduation of the first class (cohort) of students.
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