University of Minnesota medical school’s Duluth campus shifts to 4-year program
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For the first time since the school’s founding more than a half-century ago, incoming students at the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Duluth Campus this fall will be able to complete all four years of their training in Duluth.
The U of M medical school in Duluth was founded in 1972 to train doctors to serve in rural and Native American communities, following a mandate from the state legislature to the university to open a second medical school campus.
Previously, medical students at the Duluth Campus transferred to the Twin Cities after their first two years to finish their clinical training. Now they’ll stay in Duluth all four years.
“It’s extremely exciting," said Henry Sluka, a Duluth native and one of 65 incoming students who took part in the traditional “White Coat” ceremony Friday, commemorating the beginning of their journey into a career in medicine.
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“I feel extremely fortunate to be, especially a part of the first class, to go four years in Duluth and still be a part of the community that I’ve grown up and been a part of my whole life,” Sluka added.
The medical school is partnering with Aspirus St. Luke’s and Essentia Health, two regional health care systems based in Duluth that operate downtown hospitals, to provide clinical training to about 30 students during their third and fourth years.
The remaining students will participate in the Rural Physician Associate Program — the oldest program of its kind in the U.S. — which places students in nine months of clinical training in rural communities across Minnesota.
The shift to a four-year program is a “complete game-changer,” said Kevin Diebel, regional campus dean of the U of M Medical School’s Duluth Campus.
“Now we have the ability to have these long term, four-year relationships with students. We have the ability to really have a robust impact, not only on their clinical training, but also on the community that we’re training them in, and hopefully their impression of this community, so that they come back and join the workforce here in the Northland,” Diebel said.
Meanwhile, the University is continuing to push for a new building in downtown Duluth that would house the medical and pharmacy schools, which are currently located on the University of Minnesota Duluth campus.
First proposed in 2018, the new building would be located near the Essentia and Aspirus St. Luke’s hospitals. Both health systems have offered plots of land near their campuses, including the site of the former St. Mary’s hospital, which Essentia recently tore down after building a nearly $1 billion new hospital overlooking Lake Superior.
The university currently plans to request $15 million next year from the state Legislature to cover two-thirds of the cost of pre-planning and construction work for the new facility. If that funding request is approved and the planning work completed, then the university would request additional funding to construct the building at the following legislative session.
“It’s significant in the fact that our students are going to be proximal to where the patients are, and as a medical school, that makes a lot of sense,” said Diebel, who said he’s in conversations with both health care systems, as well as the College of St. Scholastica and Lake Superior College, about possible partnerships.
“We’re trying to find the partnerships and the pathways forward to try to build a win for everybody in the community,” added Diebel.
Meanwhile the University of Minnesota Medical School is opening a third campus this fall in St. Cloud, where 24 students, all from Minnesota, make up the membership of the inaugural class.
