Athens and Albany medical campuses on target for 2010, accrediting body says

Resources are adequate for Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine to proceed with a four-year campus in Athens in partnership with the University of Georgia and a two-year residential clinical campus in Southwest Georgia, the accrediting body for U.S. medical schools has confirmed.

"This is continued good news about steady progress at both campuses," School of Medicine Dean Doug Miller said about the Liaison Committee on Medical Education announcement. "We believe the LCME has pronounced both projects on track according to the timeline we have laid out."

The first class of 40 freshman students will start classes at the Interim Medical Partnership Building on Williams Street in Athens, one block from the main UGA Campus, in August 2010, says Dr. Barbara Schuster, campus dean of the MCG/UGA Medical Partnership. The LCME will receive a follow-up report at that time. The MCG School of Medicine has already accepted 60 students out of a class of 230 for next fall semester; 190 will be in Augusta. Inaugural students for the Athens campus will be assigned shortly.

MCG's first clinical campus, based at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, opened in 2005 and is on target to become a residential clinical campus in July 2010, housing students during their clinical- intensive third and fourth years of medical school. An LCME visit Dec. 2-3 will assess faculty and facilities to pave the way for its residential status. "Some of our most popular teaching sites in the state are in the Southwest region. The buzz is very positive from the students," said Dr. Linda Boyd, associate dean for regional campus coordination. The initial enrollment of eight to 10 students likely will grow to 40 in coming years.

Last year over 200 MCG medical students completed one or more clinical rotations in Southwest Georgia, working with physicians for four to six weeks per rotation in specialties including family medicine, pediatrics, surgery and obstetrics-gynecology. Residential campus status will enable students to spend a lot more time in a medically underserved area of the state, said Dr. Iqbal Khan, assistant dean of the campus which opened in 2005. "The medical community on our campus enjoys participating in student education and does an outstanding job educating future doctors. As Dr. Boyd says, there is a lot of enthusiasm here among the medical community and students alike. "

"Phoebe is committed to walking lockstep with MCG to provide the support necessary to ensure a first-class training environment that will attract the best and brightest MCG students," added Dr. Doug Patten, senior vice president of medical affairs at Phoebe. "We see this as a key component of our strategy to ensure the supply of physicians for the future needs of Southwest Georgia." A total of 12 hospitals from cities including Tifton, Moultrie and Columbus have signed on as clinical facilities for that part of the state.

In Athens, where 19 faculty are on board and more recruitment is underway, the focus is on fine-tuning the curriculum and generating enthusiasm to participate in medical education among area physicians and hospitals in Northeast Georgia. A recent open house at the new medical school building enabled Athens Regional Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital to spread the word to about 150 community physicians and hospital leaders; a few days later about 100 primary care physicians and colleagues toured the campus facility. On a recent visit to nearby Gainesville, Northeast Georgia Health System leadership also was updated on the medical campus developments. "You can definitely feel people getting much more excited," Dr. Schuster said

The campuses are part of an overall plan to increase the MCG School of Medicine's class size from 190 to 300 students by 2020 to help meet Georgia's need for physicians, according to Dean Miller, who also serves as MCG's senior vice president for health affairs. Georgia ranks ninth in the nation in both population and population growth, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and ninth as well for physicians retained in the state after public undergraduate medical education. The state currently ranks 40th in the number of physicians per capita, according to the American Medical Association.

The statewide plan includes a second clinical campus, Southeast Georgia Clinical Campus based at St. Joseph's/Candler Health System in Savannah, which is slated for residential campus designation in coming years, Dr. Boyd said. The medical school class size will grow from 190 to 240 in Augusta and 40 to 60 in Athens. Facilities to accommodate the larger class in Augusta are under design.

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Foundations, Higher-Education Leaders Explore Models to Increase Access

/PRNewswire/ -- On this historic campus that is the original nineteenth-century home of Emory University, twenty invitees representing some of higher education's most respected institutions have come together to discuss an issue with important implications for U.S. education in the twenty-first century: how to make higher education available more broadly and equitably to current underrepresented groups while also maintaining academic excellence and addressing financial and policy concerns. The conference, "Transformative Models in Higher Education," was organized by the University of Michigan's Center for Advancing Research & Solutions for Society (CARSS), hosted by Emory University and funded by the Ford Foundation.

Groups participating in the conference, held June 18-19, were education researchers, higher-education administrators and foundations with a strong focus on education. Researchers came from the University of Michigan's CARSS, School of Education, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching; the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education; Indiana University's National Survey of Student Engagement; and Wabash College's Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts. MDRC, a nonprofit education and social-policy research organization, was also represented. Higher-education administrators and foundations represented included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Educational Testing Service, Lumina Foundation, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good. Also participating in the conference was Derek Bok, president emeritus of Harvard University, who gave the keynote address.

The focus of consideration was organizational and programmatic models that have fostered high levels of participation and academic success for students from underrepresented minority populations with the goal of identifying "active ingredients" in the programs' success. These were being examined in part because, following the 2003 Supreme Court decision in a case involving the University of Michigan, criteria used to promote minority participation in the past will not be as applicable in the future. The models presented included Lone Star College-CyFair Campus (Texas), the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's C-STEP Program, the Posse Foundation and Oxford College.

Special attention was given to Emory's Oxford College. Located 38 miles east of Emory University's Atlanta campus, Oxford is one of Emory's nine academic divisions. One-fifth of the students in each Emory freshman class choose to begin their baccalaureate studies with Oxford's liberal-arts-intensive program, which spans their freshman and sophomore years. As juniors, they continue their studies on Emory's Atlanta campus. At Oxford, students have a smaller student body (approximately 750 students total), lower average class sizes (approximately 19) and faculty who, in the absence of academic majors and graduate programs, have the luxury of focusing primarily on classroom teaching. Forty-seven percent of students at Oxford come from minority populations, and many are the first in their family to attend college. These students enjoy high levels of academic success and degree completion at Emory. Oxford places great importance on teaching methods that produce active, engaged learning and, as a two-year course of study, offers unusual leadership opportunities for freshmen and sophomores.

"We were honored to assemble such a stellar group," said Earl Lewis, Emory University provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, who convened the conference. "Their discussion of the Oxford College program gave us invaluable feedback and analysis, and their enthusiasm helps fuel our efforts to make this now-unique model better known."

Conferees concluded that the Oxford model could be applied or adapted at a large number of research institutions. Organizers from CARSS are distilling the conclusions from the conference with the intention of identifying the possibilities for applying existing models and developing new ones.

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Dean selected for MCG/UGA Medical Partnership Campus in Athens

Dr. Barbara L. Schuster, an internist and seasoned medical educator who chaired the Department of Internal Medicine at Wright State University's Boonshoft School of Medicine in Ohio for a dozen years, has been named campus dean of the Medical College of Georgia/University of Georgia Medical Partnership Campus in Athens.

“We are happy to have Dr. Schuster, a proven and passionate educator, physician and administrator, lead this innovative campus that will leverage the significant strengths of Georgia's health sciences university and the state's flagship institution of higher education,” said Dr. Daniel W. Rahn, MCG president and senior vice chancellor for health and medical programs for the University System of Georgia. “Expansion of physician education is critical to the health of our citizens and to the future of our rapidly growing state. The new, four-year medical partnership campus in Athens will contribute significantly to this initiative.”

“Dr. Schuster is exactly the right person to lead this critical initiative to help address the shortage of physicians in Georgia,” said University of Georgia President Michael F. Adams. “Her background and experience have prepared her for the challenge and opportunity of building the MCG/UGA Medical Partnership from the ground up. I am pleased that our partnership with the Medical College of Georgia has taken this important step.”

Dr. Schuster, who just completed a year as a Robert G. Petersdorf Scholar-in-Residence at the Association of American Medical Colleges, assumes her duties Nov. 1, according to School of Medicine Dean D. Douglas Miller. The Athens campus plans to enroll its first students in fall 2010 as part of the School of Medicine's plan to increase its class size 60 percent to a total enrollment of 1,200 by 2020 and help meet Georgia's need for physicians.

Dr. Schuster's selection follows a national search that began in the spring. Recruiting is under way for 14 additional positions for the Athens campus, including chairs of basic and clinical sciences and an initial cohort of faculty, Dr. Miller said.

“Dr. Schuster is recognized nationally as a strong advocate of undergraduate and graduate medical education,” commented Dr. Miller. “She will be the glue that brings the two institutions together to maximize educational opportunities and outcomes for our students and Georgia's future physicians. Her success in working with residents and medical students in a consortium model of hospitals in Dayton will help her build relationships with hospitals and physicians in the Athens-Gainesville communities which are essential to the success of this new campus.”

“I am very excited and pleased that Dr. Barbara Schuster has accepted our offer to become the first campus dean of the MCG/UGA Medical Partnership,” said UGA Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Arnett C. Mace, Jr.“She possesses the expertise, experience and managerial and personal attributes to provide the leadership essential to address the education of physicians to meet Georgia’s increasing shortage of doctors. I look forward to working with her, the Medical College of Georgia and the local medical community in advancing this partnership.”

“I think this is a great opportunity and good for the state of Georgia,” Dr. Schuster said. “No partnership exists like this. It’s a wonderful way to think about expansion for other states.”

Dr. Schuster has served as professor and chair of at Wright State University since 1995, stepping down as chair in 2007 to pursue the AAMC sabbatical. Previously she served for 15 years on the faculty at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York, where she also completed medical school and an internal medicine residency. She completed a Public Health Service Primary Care Policy Fellowship in Bethesda, Md., in 1994.

She has served as medical director of the University Health Service at the University of Rochester, medical director of the University Medicine-Pediatrics Practice at Wright State University and president of Wright State's faculty practice plan. At both institutions, she worked with graduate medical education programs where residents learned at multiple hospitals. The University of Rochester's internal medicine/pediatric training program she directed has named an award in her honor. She received the 2003 Excellence in Medical Education Award from Wright State and the Teaching Excellence Award from Wright State's class of 2005.

Dr. Schuster chaired the AAMC's Council of Academic Societies from 2003-04, served on the association's Executive Committee from 2002-04 and received the AAMC's 2007 Distinguished Service Award. She participated in the AAMC Roundtable: Educating Doctors for Chronic Disease Care, from 2004-06. She served on the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians for six years and chaired its Education Committee for four years. She is immediate past president of the Association of Professors of Medicine and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine. She has been a member of the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine since 1982, including terms as president and chair of the Publications Committee. She received the association's 2004 Dema Daley Founder's Award.

Founded in 1828, MCG is the state’s health sciences university and includes the Schools of Allied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Graduate Studies, Medicine and Nursing. Founded in 1785, the University of Georgia is America’s first chartered state university and Georgia’s largest and most comprehensive educational institution including the colleges of public health, veterinary medicine, pharmacy and basic sciences in arts and sciences.

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UGA has Largest Student Body in History with Fall Enrollment of 34,180

Spurred by growth at two of its extended campuses, the University of Georgia has its largest student body in history this fall with an enrollment of 34,180—the first time ever that enrollment has topped 34,000.

The fall semester enrollment is 349 students (one percent) above last fall and 221 more than the previous record of 33,959 set in 2006.

The total includes 33,078 students on UGA’s main campus in Athens, up one percent from last year, and 938 students at the university’s extended campuses in Gwinnett County, Tifton, Griffin and Buckhead in Atlanta—a 6.2 percent increase from last fall. An additional 164 students are enrolled in independent study.

On the main campus in Athens, undergraduate enrollment totals 25,201, up by 207 over last year, and graduate enrollment increased by 110 students to a total of 6,324. Enrollment in the professional schools of law, pharmacy and veterinary medicine increased by four students to a total of 1,553.

The biggest increases at the extended campuses are at Buckhead, where 271 students are enrolled, and Griffin, where 106 students are enrolled. The Buckhead campus is mainly for working professionals and enrolls only students studying for master’s degrees in business administration. This is the first enrollment report in which Buckhead students are counted separately; in previous reports, they were counted as enrolled either in Athens or at the Gwinnett campus.

The Griffin campus has 60 undergraduates, compared to 40 last year, and 46 graduate students compared to 17 last year. The Tifton campus has a total of 48 undergraduate and graduate students, exactly the same as last year.

The Gwinnett campus has 513 students of whom 510 are enrolled in graduate courses. UGA offers only graduate courses at Gwinnett after phasing out undergraduate courses when Georgia Gwinnett College opened. Eliminating undergraduate programs was the primary factor in a 34 percent drop in total enrollment at the campus. Three undergraduates still are coded for enrollment purposes as enrolled at Gwinnett but are attending classes in Athens.

Robert Boehmer, associate provost for institutional effectiveness, said the extended campuses are a crucial factor in UGA’s efforts to promote economic growth in Georgia.

“In response to the state’s growing needs for workforce development and access to higher education, UGA has dramatically expanded its degree programs in Buckhead, Griffin, Gwinnett and Tifton,” Boehmer said.

“This effort will continue as UGA seeks to identify and implement additional degree programs uniquely suited to the needs of these key locations. UGA’s strong commitment to serving the needs of the entire state is well demonstrated by these efforts.”

Of the total 34,180 enrollment, 7,928 students had never attended UGA before including 4,376 first-time freshmen who enrolled this fall. Combined with 377 first-time freshmen who enrolled this summer, the total count of first-time freshmen for summer and fall is 4,753, an increase of 149 from last year.

Of the first-time freshmen who enrolled this fall, 295 had earned enough academic credit through joint-enrollment or advanced placement programs to be classified as sophomores, and 16 had enough credit to be classified as juniors.

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