Groundbreaking celebration for MUSC College of Medicine building

Kathryn Keller, a third-year medical student at the Medical University of South Carolina, was happy to see leaders break ground for a new College of Medicine building. “I was actually thinking about it walking over here,” she said after the ceremony.

“We don't have a space like that where we can come together right from the start of medical school. I think that medicine is a team sport. So, to be able to learn those kind of cooperation skills from day one, in the new building, would be huge.”

 

Right now, students in the oldest medical school in the South use facilities across campus, sharing classrooms and other spaces with students from MUSC’s five other colleges. College of Medicine Dean Terry Steyer, M.D., said the new 186,000-square-foot building at the intersection of President and Bee streets will give future medical students the home base they need in a state facing a physician shortage.

“This new College of Medicine building is desperately needed to meet the demands for health care in our state and to train our students in the ever-increasing knowledge required to be a successful physician while maintaining the humanistic side – the compassion and empathy that patients desire.”

 

The building where they’ll gain that knowledge will have not only large classrooms and other learning spaces but also spots for students to relax and study, a common area for faculty and alumni, an office for the dean, offices for other faculty and staff, wellness spaces, event spaces and a café. Public and private funds are being raised to pay for the $175 million building. The college has posted a video online giving the public a virtual “fly through” of what it will look like. 

But the groundbreaking was about more than speeches, symbolic shovels and hard hats. It was also about a place where MUSC will “educate the future and change the future of those we care for,” said MUSC President David Cole, M.D.

 

And bringing students closer together will help facilitate that, he said. “Within the walls of this remarkable structure, students and staff will be able to leverage the power of innovation with the state-of-the-art technologies, facilities and real-time interactive learning to have the imagination, the creativity, to bring the future to us.”

Lisa Saladin, PT, Ph.D., executive vice president for Academic Affairs and provost, spoke at the ceremony as well. “This new building represents a physical investment in the future of education, health care and research,” she said.

 

As she and other leaders spoke of the future, Steyer also highlighted the past, noting that the groundbreaking took place during MUSC’s bicentennial year. “On November 8th, 1824, the first lecture was held at the original College of Medicine building on Queen Street, led by nine faculty members,” the dean said.

“Now we educate over 720 medical students per year by sharing classroom space across the campus with five other colleges.”

In summer of 2027, when the building is scheduled to open, medical students will have a centralized space for the first time in more than 100 years. Keller, the third-year medical student, loves that idea.

“I know we really like evidence- and clinical-based practice and education, and I think this would allow students to have a better insight on that. When you get to the wards in third and fourth year, you get that team aspect, but for the first two years you don’t really get that very often,” Keller said. “The wards” refers to when students become part of a clinical team working with patients in the hospital.

“I work better in a team. I learn from my peers, I learn from my mentors. And I think to have one space to all get to work together would be huge.”