University of Kansas School of Medicine
The University of Kansas School of Medicine is a public medical school located on the University of Kansas Medical Center campuses in Kansas City, Kansas, and also Salina, Kansas, and Wichita, Kansas. The Kansas City campus is co-located with the independent University of Kansas Health System, and they are commonly known collectively as KU Med.[1][2]
Type
September 6, 1905
Matthias Salathe (interim)
Akinlolu Ojo
2,470 (Fall 2023)
Multiple sites
History[edit]
Medical instruction in the University of Kansas School of Medicine began in the 1880s with instruction in medical topics in the undergraduate school, influenced principally by chemistry professor Edgar Bailey. Medical degrees were not awarded. The idea was more fully developed when professor Samuel Wendell Williston came to Kansas from Yale in 1890 and proposed that a specific two-year course of study for medicine should be implemented at KU. In 1899, Williston was named the first dean of this two-year program at KU.
The official establishment of the school came in 1905, when the KU Board of Regents authorized the creation of a full four-year medical school at KU, accomplished by merging the existing two-year school in Lawrence with three medical colleges in the Kansas City area. The School of Medicine was officially opened on September 6, 1905. As of fall 2023, the School of Medicine has 2,470 students enrolled, including 830 students in the M.D. program.[3]
In 1995, the School of Medicine established a dual-degree MD–PhD program.[4] In 2020, the program was awarded the prestigious Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).[5][6]
Wichita campus[edit]
The School of Medicine elected to open a campus in Wichita in 1971. This campus received third and fourth year medical students for their clinical education and these students serve rotations at the Via Christi Health hospitals, Wesley Medical Center, and the Robert J. Dole VA Medical Center. Since 2011, the KU School of Medicine-Wichita has expanded to a four-year campus, serving students in their didactic and clinical education. There are over 200 students and 75 full-time faculty at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita.
The KU School of Medicine-Wichita also sponsors 13 residency programs in coordination with Via Christi Health and Wesley Medical Center. KU School of Medicine-Wichita also operates a multitude of patient care clinics such as Adult Health, Breast Cancer, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Psychology.
In addition to their MD program, the school offers an Office of Research and a Masters in Public Health graduate degree program.
