Robert Ketchum:
CLASS OF 1974
William H. Taft High SchoolClass of 1974
Woodland hills, CA
Robert's Story
I left Taft in February of 1974, and entered college in April. I attended BYU, Cal State Northridge and the University of Utah, finally graduating from BYU in 1982. I also served for 2 years (from 1977 to 1979) as a Mormon missionary in French-speaking Belgium and north-eastern France.
I earned a Ph.D. in Anatomy at the University of Minnesota (Twin cities) in 1989. I have carried out medical research as an academic, working in the field of cell transplantation and diabetes for almost 20 years. For the last 20 years or so, I have focused on teaching and administrative roles at 5 different medical schools, 4 of which were new, start-up medical programs.
I completed 1 year of post-doctoral training at the University of Miami's Diabetes Research Institute, and 1 year of post-doc at the University of Kansas Medical Center. I have held faculty positions at the University of Kansas Medical School, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, University of Pikeville College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Oklahoma State Center for Health Sciences. For three years I headed a GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) lab at the University ...Expand for more
of Virginia School of Medicine which isolated insulin-producing cells from pancreata from cadaver organ donors for transplantation as a cure for diabetes. In 2008, I joined a new free-standing medical school in Parker Colorado, Rocky Vista University, where I was a member of the founding faculty and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences. I joined a new start-up osteopathic medical school in Las Cruces, New Mexico as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs & Pre-Clinical Education in 2014; the Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine. As of 2022, I joined the Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Wichita, Kansas as Professor and Chair of Anatomy and Integrated Biomedical Sciences.
I`m married (over 40 years now) and have 3 children. The oldest is managing a research lab at the Barbara Davis Diabetes Research Center at CU Denver. The middle one earned a PhD in particle physics from the University of Chicago and is working in neutrino physics for FermiLab at CERN (the Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva Switzerland. The youngest is working as a grants administrator and coordinator at the University of Colorado in Denver.
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