Midwestern University Arizona Student Defense Lawyer
Midwestern University’s Glendale campus is unusual in that nearly everyone on it is a professional student. There are no undergraduates to absorb the university’s disciplinary attention, and every matter that arises involves someone whose academic record is already tied to a future license. Students reach me after a failed course or rotation with remediation attached, after a professionalism concern is documented, after a promotion or student progress committee meeting is scheduled, after a board or licensing exam failure triggers a progression rule, or after a dismissal recommendation arrives. The common feature is that the consequence is measured in years of training and in what a licensing board will later be told.
Overview
Midwestern University is a private, not-for-profit graduate institution, and its Glendale, Arizona campus is a large health-professions campus with more than 3,700 students spread across eight colleges: the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, the College of Pharmacy-Glendale, the College of Health Sciences, the College of Dental Medicine-Arizona, the Arizona College of Optometry, the College of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Graduate Studies, and the Arizona College of Podiatric Medicine. The Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine was the first college on the campus, beginning courses in 1996, and the campus operates on-site clinics through which students train.
Private status controls the legal theory. Midwestern is not a state actor, so there is no Fourteenth Amendment claim. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975), applies at public institutions; Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz, 435 U.S. 78 (1978), and Regents of the University of Michigan v. Ewing, 474 U.S. 214 (1985), show how much deference courts give genuine academic and clinical judgment even there. At Midwestern the operative documents are the university and college handbooks, the promotion and progression policies, the technical standards, and the clinical evaluation criteria, and those documents are the contract. See breach of contract against universities.
Federal statutes still apply. FERPA governs education records, Title IX governs sexual-misconduct proceedings, and Section 504 and the ADA govern accommodations, including in clinical settings where a program may argue that an accommodation conflicts with a technical standard. That argument is contestable and frequently under-examined. See disability accommodations under Section 504 and the ADA.
Where Midwestern University cases come from
With eight professional colleges on one campus, the case mix is broad, but the patterns are consistent. Preclinical and didactic course failures generate remediation plans and repeated years. Clinical, rotation, and clinic-based training generates evaluation disputes, and evaluations written in professionalism language are the ones that do lasting damage. Board and licensing exam failures trigger progression rules that are often more mechanical than the student expects. Accommodation problems surface after a failure rather than before it. And professionalism concerns, in every one of these colleges, accumulate quietly and are then presented all at once.
Those tracks are addressed on my medical school dismissal and remediation, clinical rotation and externship failures, and professionalism and fitness concerns pages. Where a board exam is driving the academic problem, the exam accommodation process runs on its own separate documentation standards and deadlines, and an accommodation the university approved does not carry over; see USMLE and COMLEX accommodations.
Which process you are in matters
Academic progression, professionalism review, and student conduct are separate systems with separate decision-makers and separate appeal rights, and each of Midwestern’s colleges administers its own progression rules on top of the university-wide policies. Clinical performance problems can be routed into any of the three depending on how the college characterizes them, and the characterization drives the outcome: an academic label draws deference, a professionalism label creates a durable record, and a conduct label triggers a different procedure altogether. Ask in writing which policy governs your matter.
Identify your track before responding: academic dismissal and suspension, student conduct, or Title IX. A decision that is disciplinary in substance but issued under an academic heading is worth contesting on that basis alone.
What to do first
Pull the current university handbook, your college handbook, the promotion and progression procedures, the technical standards, and the clinical evaluation policy from the university’s own site rather than relying on any summary, including this one. Because each college runs its own rules, the document that governs you is your college’s document for your cohort, not the general university statement. Save it as it reads today.
Then calendar the deadline in writing, request your file — evaluations, committee materials, professionalism reports — and preserve messages with faculty, preceptors, and clinic supervisors, along with schedules and accommodation correspondence. Do not sit for a committee meeting or provide a written statement before you understand what the college claims to have. In these programs the first meeting is not a conversation; it is the record.
What I can help with
- Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
- Helping you prepare your account, your documents, and your questions
- Testing whether the school followed its own published procedures
- Scrutinizing software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
- Assisting with the written response and appeal, to the extent the policy permits
- Serving as your advisor where the process allows it
- Negotiating sanction terms, notations, and disclosure language
What a lawyer may actually do in your case depends on that school’s policy. Some tracks allow counsel to participate, some allow a non-participating advisor, and some allow no outside person at all. Reading the current policy is the first step, and it determines what form the assistance can take.
Common questions
My college has different rules than the university handbook. Which one controls?
Usually both apply, with the college document supplying the specific progression rules and the university document supplying the general framework — but that is a question the documents themselves answer, and it is worth answering precisely before you rely on either. Where the two conflict, or where a committee applied one while your notice cited the other, that inconsistency is a legitimate argument and it should be raised in writing rather than saved.
Can the university dismiss me for failing a licensing or board exam?
Progression policies commonly attach consequences to exam attempts and failures, and those provisions are often applied mechanically. The questions worth asking are whether the policy applied is the one in effect for your cohort, whether the attempt was counted correctly, whether any appeal or petition mechanism exists, and whether an unresolved accommodation request contributed to the result. The last of those is frequently the strongest point and the one students raise last.
How much does the wording of a resolution actually matter?
More than the outcome label, in many cases. Residency programs, credentialing bodies, and state licensing boards ask about dismissals, withdrawals taken under pressure, remediation, and adverse findings, and what they read is the exact language of the resolution and the transcript notation — not your explanation. That language is negotiable more often than students assume, and negotiating it is sometimes the most valuable work available even when the underlying decision will not change.
Related Arizona pages: A.T. Still University in Mesa, Creighton University in Phoenix, and Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in Scottsdale. The full list is on the Arizona student defense index, and the case for acting before the first committee meeting is set out in Do Not Underestimate Your School.
This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order.
This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.
Attorney advertising. Zachary Gaynor is admitted in Florida and its federal courts, not in Arizona; Arizona matters are handled through the framework described on the nationwide practice page — federal-law assessment, campus-process support where the school’s policy permits an advisor, and association with local counsel or pro hac vice admission where required.