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SALINA, Kan. (AP) — Plans are in the works to move a fledgling Salina medical school program from a hospital building to a much larger downtown building.
The Salina Regional Health Foundation has entered into a contract to purchase a former bank building to serve as the new home of the city's University of Kansas Medical School campus. Plans also call for a $6.5 million capital campaign to renovate, furnish and equip the new space and create a maintenance endowment, The Salina Journal reported (http://bit.ly/1ruFPfE ).
"We are really, really excited to be at the forefront of all this," said Tom Martin, executive director of the foundation.
Since opening a Salina campus in July 2011, the medical school has been housed in the Braddick Building at the Salina Regional Health Center. The Braddick Building was constructed about 50 years ago to serve as a nursing school dormitory. Over the past year, it has started to have maintenance issues with pipes, drainage and its roof, Martin said.
Currently, eight students are accepted each year into the Salina program, which is billed as the smallest of its kind in North America.
The new building will provide 40,251 square feet of space, much larger than the 16,000-square-foot at the Braddick Building.
Dr. William Cathcart-Rake, dean of the KU School of Medicine-Salina Campus, said the larger space "will allow us the possibility to expand the class size," although there are no promises being made that student enrollment will grow. He said more money and faculty also would be needed.
"Currently, state funding is in a world of hurt, and higher education will share in the budget reductions," Cathcart-Rake said. "It's difficult to increase programming or the class load when your resources for medical education are decreased."
But Martin said expansion of the program would be beneficial to the state. He said currently significantly more students apply to medical school than can be accepted.
"Many who are not selected could do very well if we had the resources to educate and accommodate them," he said. "They would make great doctors."
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Information from: The Salina (Kan.) Journal, http://www.salina.com
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