CMED fundraising remains halfway complete; officials discuss future, admissions
With more than $12 million of the $25 million goal still sought after by university officials, Central Michigan University's fundraising efforts for the College of Medicine remain roughly halfway complete.
The current funds, $12,877,000, total to 51.5 percent of the goal set for the developing medical school, which recently received preliminary accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. Since last December's Board of Trustees meeting, an additional $234,500 has been raised.
The funds will be divided into three areas: facilities, scholarship and operations.
Kathy Wilbur, vice president of Development and External Relations, said $5.4 million of the $15 million goal for Saginaw and Mount Pleasant facilities has been acquired, $6 million has been raised toward the $8 million goal for scholarship, and $1.3 million of the expected $2 million toward operations has been acquired.
Wilbur said fundraising efforts have been right on track, and she expects the recent accreditation to help increase donations.
"Once they understood what (receiving preliminary accreditation) took, I think there’s been a great deal of respect for what the College of Medicine had to put together and what the university had to respond to, so (donors are) very pleased and excited," Wilbur said.
She said there are roughly 60 fundraising campaign volunteers helping to find donations for CMED throughout different regions of Michigan. She said because the building is now complete, it may help funding efforts as well.
"There’s no question that an announcement of preliminary accreditation helps with those efforts, but I think also having the building completed on campus helps as well," Wilbur said. "It makes it, in some ways, more tangible for donors."
Wilbur said she expects the entire $25 million to be raised for the school eventually.
"We’ll reach this funding goal," Wilbur said.
At the Feb. 16 Board of Trustees meeting, CMED Dean Ernest Yoder said the university is still expected to open up in summer of 2013 with a limited class size for the first semester. Yoder said credentials required of students applying to CMED include a 3.25 grade point average and a minimum score of 24 on the Medical College Admissions Test.
"Our plan is for the first class to be 60 and then ramp it up to a class size of 100," Yoder said.
Yoder said the next step for CMED is preparing a new study for a provisional accreditation evaluation in 2014, as well as continue to hire faculty and develop affiliations with hospital and health centers in the Michigan pipeline.
"We're at the midpoint of a five-step process," Yoder said. "We anticipate submitting a new database and self-study in anticipation of an LCME visit for provisional accreditation in fall of 2014 and a similar process leading to full accreditation in fall of 2016"
