Manchester Magazine manchester magazine fall 2019 for joomag | Page 25

MU | F e a t u r e s
D
r. Zach Waterson ’95
acknowledges it readily: He’s
a glutton.
Oh, not in the usual sense,
understand. In the sense that, along with
much else, his time at Manchester University
taught him you can never get your fill of
serving the needs of the wider world
around you.
And so Waterson loads his plate these days
without a twinge of conscience, or perhaps
because his conscience directs him to. Start
with the Fort Wayne Medical Education
Program, of which Waterson is the CEO.
Move on to the Family Medicine Residency
Program, of which he is designated
institutional official and program director.
He’s a national consultant for the American
Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), and,
last but hardly least, he’s been in medical
practice as a family physician since 1999.
If he’s a glutton, it’s not an epithet in
his case. It’s a badge of honor – one he
wears proudly as an enduring imprint of
Manchester’s positive influence.
“The service part, being a family medicine
physician ... primary care is not the glorious
specialty,” Waterson says. “But Manchester
definitely shaped me in that sense of
obligation to serve my community and
really have a lot of roles.”
And every one of his many roles helps fulfill
that obligation.
The Medical Education Program, for
instance, is a graduate medical organization
that trains 36 residents at a time, 12 per year
in the three-year program. The program
affiliates with 32 medical schools that send
students for rotations in multiple specialties
in Fort Wayne, and the program also
operates the Family Medical Center, which
serves largely underserved and marginalized
populations.
“We’re definitely a safety net in Fort Wayne
and Allen County,” Waterson says.
His consulting work with AAFP, meanwhile,
involves trying to “help family medicine
training programs all over the country be
their best.”
“I think that (compulsion to serve others)
definitely was reinforced by the education I
got at Manchester,” Waterson says.
And how did he wind up at Manchester?
There was, he admits, a touch of serendipity
to it. The son of a police officer and a nurse,
he grew up in a family of Indiana University
graduates, but he also grew up as something
of a homebody. So he wanted to stay close to
home – and he also wanted to go somewhere
he wouldn’t feel like a number, or get lost on a
campus of 40,000 or 50,000 students.
Manchester, where a couple of high school
friends were going, proved just the ticket.
“I had a couple of friends I had gone through
elementary school, junior high school, high
school with,” says Waterson, who jokingly
calls himself the “black sheep” of the family
as the only one who didn’t wind up at IU. “I
knew one was going there for education to
be a teacher, and she was a good friend of
mine for years and years and years. So I
looked into it.
years were a stepping stone to a longer-term
goal, and I just felt like I might not get there
if I went to a big school. I felt I would get
lost. You can do that when you’re in a class
with 400 people. It’s very clear when you
don’t show up to class and there’s 35 people,
even in Biology 101. Your teachers, your
profs know when you’re not there. You don’t
get lost.”
There were other advantages. Manchester’s
emphasis on a well-rounded liberal arts
education enabled Waterson to explore history
and political science and theology in addition
to his medical studies (“That has been
amazing,” he says). The smaller professor-
to-student ratios – virtually one-on-one in
some cases – enabled him to establish valued
personal relationships with his instructors
that in some cases continue to this day.
And the rigor of Manchester’s curriculum
thoroughly prepared him for the next step in
his education.
“I really felt my first year of medical
school was really a review of my last year
at Manchester,” Waterson recalls. “I took
advantage of some really high-level classes,
but you know there’s a difference when you’re
sitting in a chemistry class of 15-20 students.
And then my last year taking advanced
chemistry with two of us in the class.
“I felt like more than just a student. I was not
a student number. The professors knew your
name. They knew about you personally. They
would talk to you about short-term, long-
term, life-term goals.”
Goals that would lead to a fuller life.
And, in Waterson’s case, a fuller plate.
“I liked the smaller nature, the size of the
school. I knew for me my college undergrad
By Benjamin Smith
Manchester | 25