Meet the Deans

With the addition of Michael Bacigalupi, O.D., M.S., FAAO, dean of the Kentucky College of Optometry, and Dana C. Shaffer, D.O., FACOFP dist., FAOGME, dean of the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine, UPIKE’s health professional schools are thriving with innovative and skilled leadership.

By Mark Baggett

Since joining KYCO in July 2018 as dean, Dr. Michael Bacigalupi has been busy meeting students and planning for KYCO’s bright future.

KYCO Dean Michael Bacigalupi, O.D., sees UPIKE’s mission embedded in its students

Michael Bacigalupi grew up admiring all of the complicated instruments in an optometrist’s office in South Florida where his mother was office manager. “I was quite near-sighted,” he said, “and I was always trying out the newest contact lenses with my optometrist.”

Those early years, when he admired the optometrist in that office as a role model, prepared the adult Bacigalupi for a career in optometry that recently culminated in his being named dean of the University of Pikeville-Kentucky College of Optometry (KYCO).

He came to Pikeville after 13 years at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) College of Optometry in Florida where he was the assistant dean for student affairs and admissions. In 2015, when it was announced that KYCO was being founded at UPIKE, he “kept an eye on it” because a school in Kentucky in an underserved area would have amazing potential.

Pikeville appealed to Bacigalupi from his first visit. He got a taste of its history and culture in a “community interview” that was part of the search process. “This community reminds me of where we lived in Texas,” he said, “ ... the gentle, kind nature of the people. I felt very comfortable right away.”

The new dean and college are now joined in an exciting prospect of furthering optometric education. Many students are from small towns and immediately buy into the college’s mission of serving the medically-underserved in rural Appalachia. At the same time, because they are in Kentucky, they are able to use their training to the fullest extent of optometric care.

“Kentucky has some of the most progressive optometry practice laws in the country,” Bacigalupi says. “It allows optometrists to practice a very medical style of optometry — using lasers, for instance, and performing minor surgical procedures such as incising styes of the eyelid.

“In my opinion, our school is leading optometric education in the right direction. Our students are highly-skilled and well-trained. They want to serve the traditionally-underserved rural communities, who really need optometrists to provide a wider scope of care. At KYCO, we are allowing the students to practice to the full scope of their profession while carrying out our mission.”

A fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and a former clinical examiner for the National Board of Examiners in Optometry, Bacigalupi maintains a leadership role within the optometric profession. He serves as Chair of Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry’s Student Affairs Committee, a member of the Culture Task Force and the Committee for Applicant Development, and has fulfilled several roles in the American Optometric Association. Bacigalupi is a frequent author and lecturer in the areas of practice management, student affairs and admissions.

Bacigalupi knows about practicing in a medically underserved area, having been the only eye care provider in the two-county area around Ballinger, Texas, “in the middle of a cotton field between Abilene and San Angelo,” he says. Starting his practice from scratch, taking out business loans, growing the practice, and learning from his mistakes along the way — all were worth it, he said, “because I was giving back to a community that really needed the eye care that I could provide.”

In 2005, his career took another turn. While serving on the Texas Optometric Association Board of Directors, he was named chair of a task force to recruit pre-optometry students at the University of Houston College of Optometry. “Most of us (board members) were University of Houston-College of Optometry graduates, and we decided to speak to undergraduates in order to raise our applicant pool in Texas. I realized I really loved teaching and told my wife [Kelly] I wanted to transition into higher education.”

As a faculty member at NSU in Florida, his love for teaching and supervising students in the clinics developed “organically” into an administrative role. His calm personality and his management skills in practice led to his promotion to the assistant dean for student affairs and admissions.

He says that optometry students are very similar to those in other health professions, but those at Pikeville are unique: “Their mission for service — really wanting to serve patients in need — is really special,” he says. “They often come from small towns and small colleges, and they want to give back after graduation.”

Dr. Dana Shaffer made a seamless transition into his new role as dean of KYCOM and has quickly become an advocate and mentor for students.

KYCOM Dean Dana Shaffer, D.O., follows the Marcus Welby model in leading Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine

Exira, Iowa, tried a novel approach in recruiting Dana and Joan Shaffer to their community in the early 1980s. A local committee conducted multiple fundraisers to accumulate $20,000 of forgivable loans to persuade the Shaffers to locate to Exira. The loan was forgiven over a five-year commitment period as Dr. Shaffer maintained his family medicine practice in Exira.

“Raising $20,000 was herculean,” said Dana Shaffer, now dean of the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine (KYCOM) at UPIKE. “The older doctor who served the area for years was retiring, and they essentially offered a scholarship that allowed me to put food on the table for my family. The community literally had donation cans at convenient stores and held bake sales. It was the first time I had ever heard of a community getting together to recruit a physician. I realized just how important it was for them to have a physician in town, and I have always appreciated what they did.”

While in the U.S Navy serving as a hospital corpsman, Shaffer met and married a Navy nurse, Joan, whose hometown was 10 miles from Exira. Prior to Shaffer's graduation from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1985, the couple was interested in moving to a small town, and rural Iowa seemed like a good opportunity.

“I knew I wanted to be a small-town family doctor, a Marcus Welby-style family friend,” said Shaffer, referring to the congenial television doctor of the 1970s. He went on to fit the profile well, and the community got its money’s worth. He stayed 22 years in Exira, practicing rural family medicine in the areas of osteopathic manipulative medicine, obstetrics and emergency medicine. He also served in the Office of Clinical Affairs at Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine for several years.

By 2013, Shaffer was ready for a different opportunity. Through his professional associations, he knew Boyd Buser, former dean of KYCOM, and William Betz, former chair of the department of family medicine at KYCOM. “I had absolutely no intention of coming to Kentucky, to UPIKE, or to a smaller osteopathic college, but they kept hounding me, and to get them off my back, I agreed to spend a weekend in Pikeville,” Shaffer says jokingly of what he thought was a courtesy visit.

“The people were great; the scenery was wonderful,” he remembers. “Most importantly, they weren’t just talking the talk, they were walking the walk.” The “walk,” as he describes it, was the college’s mission of recruiting local men and women, training them in the mountains, and creating primary care physicians to serve the underserved. “I was close enough to retirement to realize I would enjoy coming here for the rest of my working life, and being a small part of this mission.”

Shaffer, who was senior associate dean of osteopathic medical education and professor of family medicine at KYCOM before taking over as dean in July 2018, names several objectives for the school. But first, he says he wants to avoid “undoing all the good work” of his two predecessors.

“I want to make sure our graduates are as well prepared as possible as they move into the new world of medical technology,” he says. “It’s very important that students have a finger on the pulse of the directions in medical technology and in osteopathic medicine.”

Shaffer keeps track of these professional issues through his leadership roles in national associations. He is a distinguished fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians, was recently named chair of the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners’ Board of Directors and recently served several years as chair of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians Executive Council of the Conclave of Fellows.

Growing up in eastern Pennsylvania, on the northern edge of Appalachia, Shaffer’s background links him to Pikeville, where the concerns of the rural, family doctor still occupy his attention. He is a preceptor at the Pikeville Medical Center Family Medicine Clinic and has served on numerous local, state and national committees focused on access to affordable medical care, scope of practice issues, the use of chronic pain medication, electronic medical records and health care legislation.

His goals for the college are student-oriented.

“The students here are such high-quality people,” Shaffer says. “They are unique in many ways because we have a number of first-generation high school graduates, not just first-generation college graduates.”

“To see them come from such humble beginnings, where their fathers might have quit school in the eighth or ninth grade to work in the mines, and now to be in medical school — it is phenomenal. They are very dedicated to getting their education, staying in the area and treating the people of Central Appalachia.”

Not surprising for someone whose first salary as a doctor was paid by small-town fundraisers, Shaffer wants to help reduce students’ financial debt, which could reach $180,000-$250,000 by the time they graduate from medical school, according to national statistics.

“KYCOM needs to continue building post-graduate residency programs to address both a local and national need,” Shaffer says. Medical school graduates tend to practice where they complete their postgraduate residency after medical school graduation.

Today, Shaffer says he is “blessed” to follow the Marcus Welby model at Pikeville. “When I was in private practice, I worked 90-100 hours a week, and I absolutely loved it. Taking care of folks was an honor and privilege. These days I only put in 60-70 hours a week, but it’s not really work, because I love what I do − helping young people become the best physicians they can be.”