Inside Belmont’s future medical school

BY HANNAH HERNER

Those working to bring Belmont’s future medical school to fruition now have an extra year to do so, and they say they will have plenty to do before welcoming students in the fall of 2024.

Construction workers are currently adding the sixth and final floor at the site of the Thomas F. Frist Jr. College of Medicine, with construction slated to be completed in April 2024.

Across campus, the college’s faculty members sit elbow-to-elbow in cubicles putting together a curriculum for the medical school. The admissions staff is envisioning how they will recruit the ideal student.

They are all gearing up for a site visit in July from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which will decide if the college can move from candidate to preliminary status and start recruiting students. School leaders hope to hear back in October.

Construction is on track

Having an extra year means contractor R.C. Matthews does not have to worry as much about supply shortages, says Chase Trivett, owner of ChaseCo, who has served as Belmont’s owner’s representative on all of the school’s construction projects since 2004.

“Supply chain issues are absolutely a real thing,” Trivett said. “We’re fortunate enough that, because of the overall project scheduling, we’re ordering things a year in advance — sometimes even longer — to battle the supply chain issues. Stuff that would normally take three-to-four months might take six, eight months.”

When completed, the roughly 195,000-square-foot building will blend in with Belmont’s existing Greek revival aesthetic, complete with pillars and Cinderella staircases.

The building will feature a split entry, with students entering on the first floor on the Wedgewood Avenue side and the second floor on the Acklen Avenue side. The first and second floor will have two tiered learning theaters to accommodate 150 to 200 students as well as a cafe, lobby and smaller classroom spaces. The third floor will house the school’s simulation technology, and the fourth is for patient volunteers and actors. The fifth and sixth floors will house additional offices, including office space for 10 Harry Potter-style “houses,” a common medical school practice.

The faculty and staff are expanding Belmont has 23 faculty and 14 staff for the medical school, plus five on the executive leadership team. The school also has 11 open job listings and is actively hiring. Of those listed on the school’s staff page, the highest number were hired from out of state, while seven came from Belmont, six from Meharry Medical College, three from Vanderbilt University and three from Lipscomb University.

The team of 42 will be led by former longtime Vanderbilt exec Anderson Spickard III, at least through the accreditation process. If the school is granted preliminary status this year, it will then move toward provisional status, which requires that students have completed their first year and can give feedback. Full accreditation cannot come until students graduate from the program.

In November, Belmont announced that it would begin hiring Jewish faculty and staff for the medical school, law school and pharmacy school. Belmont has traditionally only hired Christian professors. The LCME requires that schools have a diverse faculty that is reflective of the student population, explained E. Terrell Washington, assistant dean for faculty and academic affairs. He described adding Jewish faculty as “one of many ways to live that out.” No word yet on if Belmont will expand to more religions or extend the policy to the rest of the university.

The curriculum will require collaboration

During the July LCME visit, the faculty will present the first 18 months of curriculum. In interviews with the Post, professors described a “startup-style” environment as the group works toward an integrated medical education curriculum, combining basic sciences and clinical care through case studies.

“If I get hired to teach microbiology in another medical school, I am given that ‘this is our syllabus, and this is what the schedule looks like to go and teach,’ but, here we have the opportunity to get together with each other collaborate, build it brick by brick,” said Tanu Rana, associate professor or microbiology and immunology.

Medical school is made up of two years of science classes and two years of clinical rotations. HCA will be the school’s only clinical affiliate for third- and fourth-year students, Washington said.

The curriculum also will combine the “head and heart” said Andrew Michel, associate professor of psychiatry, as well as interprofessional education as part of a collaboration with Belmont’s schools of nursing, pharmacy, occupational therapy and physical therapy.

“We need for them to be academically excellent in terms of medical knowledge, and the intellectual side, the head, but also to be formed with discerning hearts,” Michel said, adding that the goal is to foster “a medicine that knows about tacit wisdom and is trained in the virtues so that it knows how to apply the science and the medical knowledge toward persons who are suffering and can be aware of their whole life and personhood.”

The ideal student

Even in a town of three medical schools, Belmont should not have an issue with demand. The admissions staff expects upwards of 3,000 applicants for the inaugural class, which will have 50 students. By the third year, the school will work up to 75 students, with 100 students expected in future classes. The enrollment ison par with Vanderbilt, which admitted 96 students in 2021, and Meharry, which sits around 115 students per class.

With a new school, people like Jean Shelton, assistant dean for admissions, can build the admissions and recruitment process around exactly what student they want. She said this process combines metrics, experiences and attributes.

As a private school, Belmont will not have any requirements for balancing in-state and out-of-state students, Shelton said. The school also will not require students to be Christian, though associate dean for student affairs and diversity Karen Lewis said, “we are very secure in our identity as a Christian or Christ-centered university.”

“The most difficult, but the most fun piece for me is the attributes,” Shelton said. “Who are you? What kind of a person are you? Do your morals and values align with ours here at Frist? And is that person going to be a good fit here?”

This story first appeared in our sister publication Nashville Post.