Photo/Grant Welker
MCPHS' presence has grown downtown, as students in white lab coats can be seen on city streets.
September 27, 2019
MCPHS president and Worcester native retiring
Photo | Courtesy
MCPHS President Charles Monahan
By Grant Welker
Charles Monahan, the president of MCPHS University for more than two decades and a Worcester native, will retire effective in January, the school announced Friday.
MCPHS, which has a main campus in Boston, has expanded significantly in Worcester during Monahan's tenure, with 1,500 students and academic programs including pharmacy, nursing, acupuncture and optometry. The college has renovated downtown buildings and converted the former Crowne Plaza hotel into a dormitory.
MCPHS's students, often easily identifiable in their white lab coats, can often be seen walking through downtown, giving the school easily the biggest presence in the neighborhood of any college in the city.
Monahan, a 1962 graduate of what was then the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, has led the school since 1997. In that time, the school has grown from 1,000 students in one building in Boston to 7,200 students today in more than 100 degree and certificate programs in Boston, Worcester and Manchester, N.H.
A search committee will be formed to find Monahan's successor, the school said. Richard Lessard, the school's executive vice president, CFO and COO, will serve as interim president.
MCPHS opened in Worcester in 2000 when it was known as the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, having outgrown its Boston campus and having no room to grow in the city's dense Longwood neighborhood.
MCPHS first opened in a single building at 19 Foster St., with an accreditation for just 150 students per academic class. It is now approaching 2,000 students in the city, having since opened two more buildings on Foster St., including the $45-million Living and Learning Center at 25 Foster St. In 2012, the former Crowne Plaza was turned into residences for students, a student center and a home for MCPHS's optometry program. The site has since been expanded with a $10-million, 54,000-square-foot wing.
Student housing has also been added in buildings on Salisbury and Lancaster streets.
In 2013, the school bought the former Morgan Construction Co. building at 15 Belmont St., giving the school an 87,000-square-foot building for which it is still determining potential uses. In May, it bought a 43,000-square-foot building at 379 Main St. for $6.9 million. The building includes 55 single units mostly occupied by MCPHS students who previously rented from SJ Realty.
With that growth has come an expansion of academic programs as well.
Pharmacy now accounts for only 30 percent of MCPHS's enrollment, as the school has expanded into dental hygiene, medical imaging, therapeutics and, most recently, acupuncture and optometry.
The optometry program in Worcester is one of only 23 in the country to be members of the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry, and one of just two in New England, along with the New England College of Optometry in Boston. The acupuncture program was moved to Worcester from Newton when MCPHS bought the New England School of Acupuncture in 2015.
"President Monahan is not only a businessman and educator with a keen eye for opportunity, he is one of the most caring people I know," Jeanine Went, the executive director of the Higher Education Consortium of Central Massachusetts, said in a statement.
"I, for one, will miss Charlie tremendously. He has been a mentor, friend, and at times, a father figure for me," Went said, describing the college providing HECCMA with its office space in an MCPHS building on Norwich Street for no cost. "I am ever grateful for his contributions to higher education in our region, and to HECCMA. His immense generosity and collaborative spirit will not be forgotten."
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