Trustees approve Phase I construction of CMED East in Saginaw
The Central Michigan University Board of Trustees approved construction of Phase I of the College of Medicine's Saginaw facility on Thursday.
The two story, 52,100-square-foot structure will be built on the campus of Covenant HealthCare and will come with a $25.2-million price tag.
Funding for the building will come from three sources, according to Vice President of of Finance and Administrative Services David Burdette: About $10 million of the funding will come for university reserve funds, $5.5 million will come from CMU medical educational partners and $9.7 million will come from fundraising.
Construction for CMED East Phase I will begin sometime this fall with plans to open up in the spring or summer of 2015 so the college's students can complete their third and fourth years at the facility.
"It has taken a monumental effort, but we are here," University President George Ross said. "I want to thank and applaud all the faculty members who made the opening of America's 137th med school possible."
Though construction CMED East Phase I has been approved, CMED's work toward the Saginaw campus is not finished.
"The original plan for Saginaw was to have campuses at Covenant and St. Mary's (Hospital in Saginaw)," Ross said. "That larger vision still exists, so we decided to phase it. The first phase is the Covenant campus, and if approved, the second phase will include the start of a facility at St. Mary's."
Currently, the university is awaiting the arrival of the inaugural class who will attend a white coat ceremony on Aug. 4. Classes begin Aug. 12
Moving forward, Ross said about 1,100 applications have been submitted for the 2014-15 class, which will grow from 64 seats to 100.
"When we started planing, we wanted to have 100 students per year and to have an overall enrollment of four hundred," Ross said. "During the Liaison Committee on Medical Education accreditation process, it was recommended we start with a smaller class of 64. Since the recommendation, we have had additional visits from LCME and they saw all the great work and preparation we had done. They then approved us to expand the class size to the desired 100."
Board of Trustees Chairman Brian Fannon said the smaller inaugural class will help the college's opening go more smoothly than it might otherwise.
"We are starting out a little lower so we can get our feet on the ground and not make any crucial errors. We want this to be very successful, so we lowered the amount of students the first year and allow everyone to get going," Fannon said.
Ross said the focus will remain on attracting and retaining Michigan students at the university, as opposed to recruiting aggressively on a regional or national level.
"The model of 80 percent Michigan residents has not changed," Ross said. "We are looking for doctors who will go back to their communities and serve the state of Michigan. The projections for a shortage of physicians and doctors over the next 10 years is up to 6,000. The whole mission for the medical school is built around serving the residents of Michigan"
