Integration and Expansion

CMU’s College of Medicine has the opportunity to expand and consolidate all four years of medical education into a new building to be designed in Saginaw. Over 14 years ago, when CMU decided to start the College of Medicine, they built two facilities to accommodate a class size of 64 students: one building in Mt Pleasant for first- and second-year students and one in Saginaw for years three and four to be in proximity to teaching hospitals. With strong demand from applicants, the class size has been 104 students per year. We remain at 104 students per class in the first and second years without the capacity to increase the class size and support our mission. Best practices in medical education now require that first- and second-year students receive basic science as well as clinical experiences early, which we cannot provide in the current Mt. Pleasant facility. Our clinical campus is a 60-minute drive from our main campus - the farthest distance between sites of any medical school in the country. Saginaw provides sufficient hospital beds/patient encounters, residency programs, and the diversity of medical specialties to deliver the required experiences to our students. With larger facilities, CMU can educate even more physicians to serve the critical health care needs of the rural and underserved counties in Michigan, the core mission of the College of Medicine and a key goal in CMU’s new Strategic Plan. We believe this decision will elevate CMU’s reputation statewide and nationally.

Since its inception, the College of Medicine has had strong and long-term affiliation agreements with hospitals, physicians, and the VA in Saginaw. The expansion and consolidation into a larger facility in Saginaw allows CMU to increase the number of medical students to 125 students per class, a 20% increase, in three to five years after opening and ultimately a 45% increase to 150 in medical school enrollment from today's level; institute current best practices for educating medical students; and provide greater prospects for clinical rotations for its medical students.

This is in part because of the larger College of Medicine Building, but also because of the number of hospital beds and clinical rotations in Saginaw, as well as the number of faculty and residents in Saginaw that educate medical students. Presently, we have approximately 140-150 third- and fourth-year students training in Saginaw at any one given time. Saginaw has the necessary medical, surgical, and psychiatric beds; operating rooms and surgical centers; FQHCs (Federally Qualified Health Centers), a VA hospital, etc., as well as faculty and residents to educate third- and fourth-year students. CMU has a state-of-the-art Simulation Center in Saginaw that allows us to train our students based on the best educational standards nationally. We anticipate welcoming our first cohort to the new College of Medicine building for the start of classes in the fall of 2028.

A CMU capital fundraising campaign, supported by CMU but undertaken by CMU College of Medicine and local stakeholders, is underway to raise $200 million from new donors, debt-free to CMU. $100 million will be earmarked for construction and maintenance of the new College of Medicine building in an area of Saginaw known as the Medical Diamond, and $100 million earmarked for other critical purposes including scholarships, education, research, and continued growth in the region. Plans are to raise $15 million of the $200 million to support health-related initiatives on CMU’s Mt. Pleasant campus. No funds from the University’s operating budget will be used for this project. The City of Saginaw is investing $30 million to develop the necessary infrastructure in the Medical Diamond area that will be of great benefit for the planned new CMU College of Medicine building.