One of the nation’s oldest medical schools is being reborn.

The last decade for the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine has yielded strategic, phenomenal growth in educational, research and clinical initiatives in diseases affecting every family in Georgia and the United States.

Growth in areas such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, is validated by unprecedented research funding and clinical activity as well as a re-chiseling of the face of MCG, Georgia’s health sciences university.

Graduate Medical Education Summit

Medical educators, health care executives and policy makers from across Georgia and the nation will gather in Atlanta Oct. 15 and 16 for a leadership summit aimed at developing a statewide strategy for expanding graduate medical education.

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These initiatives are reflected in five discovery institutes being launched to enhance collaboration between basic and clinician scientists. The discovery institutes – Brain & Behavior, Cardiovascular, Diabetes & Obesity, Immunologic and Vision Science – will more efficiently advance patient treatment and disease prevention.

The institutes reflect the health needs of Georgians and complement national initiatives to optimize clinical-translational research that yields life-impacting results, such as new diagnostic tools and drug therapies. A sixth Research Discovery Institute will use a similar approach to translate scholarly innovations in medical education.

To accommodate growth, research space has essentially doubled in the last handful of years and existing laboratory facilities are being upgraded. An additional research facility is

State of the School Address

“The focus for the MCG School of Medicine is and always will be our educational programs, educating young physicians, but we must also continue to invest – in things such as training and recruiting faculty, academic excellence, innovation and discovery – grow and then reinvest to create value and increase our impact.”

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under study as part of the School of Medicine's plan to better meet the physician needs of our rapidly growing state.

The 2008 freshman medical school class of 190 students – already one of the largest class sizes in the nation – will grow by 60 percent over the next dozen years to a total class size of 1,200.

Expansion will occur at the home campus in Augusta as well as clinical campuses, in southwest Georgia, based at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, and in southeast Georgia, based at St. Joseph's/Candler Health System in Savannah. The plan features development of a new four-year campus in Athens, Ga., in partnership with the University of Georgia.

That partnership between two Georgia research universities also will enable expansion of the M.D.-Ph.D. program as well

2009 Admissions Bulletin

The 2009 Admissions Bulletin is now available.

It provides details on applying to the School of Medicine, and insight to the MCG experience.

Visit the Office of Admissions to download a PDF, or to find out more about the application process.

as research initiatives at both universities. Expanding partnerships with physicians and hospitals throughout Georgia is enabling students to get a variety of excellent clinical experience, from small community practices to tertiary care facilities.

MCG School of Medicine also is leading a statewide initiative to foster expansion of residency training which is necessary to grow more physicians for Georgia. The medical school curriculum is being fine-tuned, with an early, ongoing emphasis on patients and an integrated approach to learning that better reflects how medicine is practiced. The admissions process also is evolving to accommodate student growth.

What started in 1828 in two borrowed rooms in Augusta, Georgia’s old City Hospital has only just begun.