Paving Their Path
The future of healthcare is coming.
He’s empowering WCU students to lead the way.
Pushing the envelope
Over the past two decades, Marc Duey has seen firsthand how innovation saves lives. As founder, president, and CEO of ProMetrics in King of Prussia, Duey helps provide market research, strategic planning, and novel cutting edge database services to biopharmaceutical firms.
“A few years ago, we began incorporating digital wearables, ingestibles, and artificial intelligence to build patient-specific datasets in the pursuit of better healthcare,” Marc says. “Our work with emerging therapies and patient-level data has helped introduce dozens of successful life-saving therapeutic products.”
Marc built ProMetrics’s success on his background in both biology and business. After earning his Master of Science degree in Toxicology from Ottawa University and his MBA from Western University, Marc served as president of Robert S. First, Inc., an international management consulting firm, then founder and president of the market research firm DuWest Research.
More recently, Marc added “adjunct professor” and “donor” to his growing list of roles. After auditing an epidemiology class to assist a family member at West Chester University, Marc was invited to lead a few lectures himself. Twelve years later, he is now an adjunct professor for WCU’s School of Business and the Pharmaceutical Product Development program.
That relationship with the University led the Duey family to establish the Duey Centers for Science as part of their $1 million gift to the Sciences & Engineering Center and The Commons (SECC). Slated to open in 2020, the facilities are set to become the new heart of the campus. “Careers will be initiated, new enterprises will be formed, and patients will be better served,” Marc says.
Marc Duey
Founder, president, and CEO of ProMetrics
Managing Partner, Duce Management
West Chester University Adjunct Professor
$1 million donor to the Sciences & Engineering Center and The Commons
“We can be confident that our gifts have contributed directly to future professionals who will have a hand in moving patients from a condition of disease to one of comfortable ease.”
The Duey family worked closely with the West Chester University Foundation to plan and finalize their gift. While the contribution was both significant and specific, their hope is that it will spur other donors to find ways to support their own passions.
Facilities of the future
Spanning 176,000 square feet, the SECC will be nearly twice the size of the next largest academic and service building on campus. The cutting-edge facilities will be home to the University’s growing health science curricula, physics space, expansive academic and support areas, dining services, parking garage — and an all-new new biomedical engineering program.
According to Marc, the program reflects where the healthcare industry is already moving — and where WCU students can make a difference. “We live in a connected world. The internet of things is here,” he says. “Biomedical engineering is poised to drive data collection to harness the value of big medical data. It offers the potential to push the envelope on what is possible, creating immense opportunity for the University’s young designers, programmers, and engineers.”
The Duey Biomedical Engineering Center will allow students to apply biology and science methodologies along with engineering principles to develop prosthetics, artificial organs, and imaging procedures. And for students in nursing and other healthcare fields, the Duey Immersive Learning Center will feature human-like robots for critical response training in real-world hospital settings.
“We’re living in a time when social media and humankind’s knowledge is available in the palm of your hand,” Marc says. “The Immersive Learning Center will help students develop the ability to focus extensively and intensively on the patient, bringing all interoperable technology to serve populations in the US but also in developing geographies where the need for cost-effective delivery is acute.”
Shaping what’s next
For Marc, the opening of the SECC represents more than a chance to secure his and his family’s legacy — it’s the opportunity to see their vision for the University come to life. In the same way that he’s found success building links across industries, he wants students to gain a broader perspective of healthcare.
“My vision is for integrated and immersive learning across departments and campuses,” Marc says. “A biomedical engineering student should be able to learn and collaborate with marketing, nursing, information systems, data science, and entrepreneurial students on the WCU or any Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education campus.”
The Duey family worked closely with the West Chester University Foundation to plan and finalize their gift. While the contribution was both significant and specific, their hope is that it will spur other donors to find ways to support their own passions.
“Each and every contribution to the project represents an important element to the whole,” Marc says. “Once the SECC is complete, we can all feel very good that for many years to come, significant numbers of students will matriculate after being indelibly formed by their experiences within this special building. We can be confident that our gifts have contributed directly to future professionals who will have a hand in moving patients from a condition of disease to one of comfortable ease.”