Take an inside look at Mercer’s new medical school campus opening soon in Columbus
Construction at Mercer University’s School of Medicine Columbus campus is taking shape, and students could be walking the halls of the new facility soon.
The campus is expected to have an ahead-of-schedule opening this December and accept its first batch of students in August, according to Dr. Maurice Solis, senior associate dean for the Columbus campus. Classes will be housed in a temporary space on Fifth Avenue for one semester before being moved to the new campus.
“(The new campus) will be a thriving part of Columbus,” Solis told the Ledger-Enquirer during a tour Monday. “It’ll be integrated into the hospitals, into the other schools and into the research community and be, basically, a part of Columbus.”
The first class will consist of 30 students, all residents who have lived in Georgia for at least one year, per Mercer School of Medicine’s admissions policy. The following semester, that will grow to 40, then 50 and so on. As the number of students increases, so will the number of faculty, Solis said, to keep the faculty-to-student ratio as low as possible.
A ‘spectacular medical education’
Students accepted into Mercer School of Medicine have the option to choose between its three campuses: the main one in Macon and satellite campuses in Savannah and Columbus.
The curriculum among the three won’t differ much, and rooms in the Columbus campus have been designed to allow for virtual instruction.
“It really does tie all three campuses into one medical school,” Solis said.
The school plans to have a guaranteed admissions program with Columbus State where, if the college’s pre-med students meet the criteria for admission, they automatically get to attend medical school at Mercer’s Columbus campus, Solis said.
Solis said the school also plans to connect science researchers in Columbus with clinical researchers to help create an environment for the biotechnology industry.
“I think (the students) are going to get a spectacular medical education,” he said. “ ... They’re going to have a state-of-the-art facility in terms of technology, both educational technology, simulation technology, research opportunities and service opportunities that we’re going to create in town.”
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The campus is being built on six acres west of First Avenue and north of the train overpass adjacent to the TSYS campus.
TSYS, a Global Payments company, gifted the land to the university, which scrapped its plans to turn the Rothschild Building on 11th Street into the new campus. The gift of vacant land allowed Mercer to construct the $32.4 million, 85,000-square-foot facility on the land that stretches north from Railroad Avenue to 18th Street.
Mercer medical students have been doing clinical rotations with Columbus doctors for more than 20 years. In 2012, the Macon-based university expanded its involvement in the local medical community by offering clinical education to third- and fourth-year medical students at Midtown Medical Center (now called Piedmont Columbus Regional) and St. Francis-Emory Hospital. That program has grown from 12 to 40 students in seven years.
This story was originally published July 28, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
