Welcome to the School of Medicine
Woodward
As both a former student, faculty member and now vice dean, I can say that our medical school is among the finest in the country. Our students consistently excel at licensure exams, and when they leave here to do residencies elsewhere, we find that they are ready on day one to take care of patients.
This medical school began in Oxford on the University of Mississippi's main campus in 1903 as a two-year, certificate program. In 1955, the school moved to Jackson where its curriculum was expanded to four years in the brand-new Medical Center. The original building housed the school of medicine, the first two wings of university Hospital and the Rowland Medical Library.
The campus in 1955 is barely discernible in today's complex that includes five schools and four hospitals in a completely new physical plant. The Medical Center occupies 164 acres in the heart of Mississippi's capital city, the most densely populated piece of real estate in the state with more than 7,500 employees, 2200 students and 25,000 visitors, vendors and patients on campus every day.
Medical students have the advantage of living and learning with all the other health professional students on campus. The School of Nursing, the School of Health Related Professions, the School of Dentistry all have their own buildings on campus. The School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences was elevated from a program to a school in 2001. Hospitals on campus include a brand new University Hospital, the Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children, the Winfred L. Wiser Hospital for Women and Infants and the Wallace Conerly Critical Care Hospital. The oldest hospital on campus was completed in 1997.
The Medical Center is home to some nationally recognized research centers in cardiovascular physiology and obesity, neuroscience and women's health.
Our school has a remarkable history for one so small and relatively young. We are proud to have been home to two of the most famous names in American medicine. Both Dr. Arthur C. Guyton and Dr. James D. Hardy spent their careers here. Guyton was the first author of the Textbook of Physiology, used by more medical students around the world than any other medical text. He was also one of the world's foremost physiologists and trained 29 physiologists who went on to become chairs in medical schools around the country and world. Hardy led a team that performed the world's first lung transplant in 1963 and the world's first heart transplant in 1964. And as proud as we are of our history, we take just as much pride in our future - a future vested in the lives and careers of prospective medical students just like you. In our time, we want to help solve some of Mississippi's previously intractable health dilemmas - access to care and the disparities of health status between rich and poor, black and white.
And when we select students, we want them to be as committed to solving these problems as they are to academic excellence. One cannot be the servant of the other. They must exist in equal measure in the students who will make this state healthier.
LouAnn Woodward, M.D.
Vice Dean and Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs
University of Mississippi Medical Center
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