When Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine's accreditation was renewed in 2008, the Association of American Medical Colleges asked the university to expand its roster of medical students. Pamela Davis, the dean of the medical school, says accreditors were also critical of the school’s facilities. And so is she.
DAVIS: The current facilities really resemble my high school. They were built in the 1950s and they are dated, and they’re not the right size and they don’t have modern technology. We do have lecture halls – a lot of lecture halls – but we’re not doing lecture classes anymore. And we don’t have the rooms appropriate for small groups.
The school turned to the Cleveland Foundation and Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation. Together, the two groups have pledged $20 million dollars – their biggest single donations ever – toward an estimated total of $50 million, with the remaining funds coming from Case Western Reserve’s billion-dollar capital campaign.
The new building will go up on East 105th Street on the site of the old Mt. Sinai Medical Center. Instead of lecture halls, the new building will house state-of-the-art classrooms and anatomy labs, as well as the school’s community health research and outreach programs. Davis says the university hopes to have construction underway by 2016.