The summer/fall 2019 issue of DMU Magazine featured news of the University’s new campus in West Des Moines, with plans to move to the 88-acre site in 2023. We asked readers: Amid all the changes the institution has undergone in its 122-year history, what aspects of the University should never change?
“Byron Laycock at graduation told our class: ‘Change is inevitable,’” responded Ralph Levy, D.O.’60, quoting the late legendary osteopathic manual medicine professor. “What is dogma today may be heresy tomorrow, and what is heresy today may be dogma tomorrow. Learn and grow. Do not fear change. If you won’t or can’t change, you will be a danger to your patients and yourself. So my congratulations to DMU and Dr. Franklin.”
Mary Ann Zug, former vice president for student services and institutional historian who retired from the University in 2017, and Kay Grigsby, M.L.I.S., archives and special collections librarian, noted a correction to the cover story: The new West Des Moines campus will be the University’s fourth location, not its third. The school opened in 1898 as Dr. S.S. Still College of Osteopathy at 1428 West Locust St., then moved in 1927 as Des Moines Still College to a building on 722 Sixth Ave. In 1972, the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, now DMU, relocated to its current site at 3200 Grand Ave.
“While change is inevitable, I would like to suggest that history should remain constant,” stated Zug, who served as managing editor of Now is the Time; Des Moines is the Place: A History of Des Moines University, 1898-2003, published in 2015. “So many wonderful things happened at each of those [campus] locations that I don’t want any of them forgotten. It was a privilege to work on the history, and I firmly believe that history is the inspiration for our future!”