A new medical school set for the University of Georgia (UGA) campus in Athens has been approved for the next step in the accreditation process.
A news release said the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) announced it had granted candidate status for the UGA School of Medicine. The approval indicates the medical education program for the school has progressed toward meeting LCME’s accreditation standards.
“I am proud of the tremendous progress we have made toward enrolling the first class of students in the UGA School of Medicine,” said President Jere Morehead in the news release. “I am grateful to Dean Shelley Nuss and everyone who has worked so hard over the past year to get us to this point.”
The Medical College of Georgia (MCG) and UGA currently have a partnership, offering medical school classes in Athens. That partnership, which started in 2010, continues as the proposed new college works its way through the accreditation process.
“The only thing to change is it is going to become independent of us,” Dr. David Hess, Dean of MCG, told ABD. “They will eventually separate from us, but it’ll be a gradual separation. Probably July 2026 will be their first class. But everybody that’s admitted to that school before July 2026, like this year and last year, are our students the whole way through.”
Hess said MCG currently has one of the largest classes in the nation, with more than 300 students enrolled, including the 60 slots currently filled in the Athens partnership. When the new school is up and running, those slots will be reabsorbed into MCG.
“We will admit more students here, maybe a few more in Savannah, but we’ll definitely admit more students here and into our other regional campuses, so that we will not lose any students in MCG, which is good for the state. We’ll have 364 students, and then they’ll gradually increase,” he explained. “So, this is to get more net students to solve the crisis of physician shortages.”
For a state the size of Georgia to have just one public medical school is unusual, Hess said.
“But the other problem we have is that we don’t have enough GME (graduate medical education) slots or residency slots. So, we also have to address that,” he said. “We’re 40th in the country in doctors per capita, so we know we need more medical school slots, and we also need more GME slots. Otherwise, we export medical students to other states, and while it’s a good chance some of them would come back, you’re much more likely to practice in Georgia if you went to medical school and your residency here.”
Groundbreaking for the new Athens complex was held in April 2024. The building will have 92,000 square feet, with 67,000 square feet dedicated to medical education. Biomedical research laboratories will occupy the remaining 25,000 square feet. Groundbreaking is anticipated this May for the Medical Education and Research Building. It will be 93,000 square feet and include an anatomy lab, classrooms, and a medical library.
The next step in the accreditation process will be an onsite visit this fall by a team appointed by the LCME. The LCME is sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association.
In the news release, Founding Dean Shelley Nuss said they will be ready.
“Our faculty and staff are working tirelessly to prepare for the upcoming site visit as we work to obtain preliminary accreditation status. Once the medical education program has reached preliminary accreditation, the School of Medicine may begin to recruit the inaugural class of UGA medical students.”
“It was a good partnership to launch them,” said Hess. “It’s a lot easier to apply as a new school if you’ve been to a medical school rather than you’re starting totally from scratch. So, it did accelerate their process of being independent and new.”
He added the new school will advance health care and doctor training in Georgia, while MCG is the historic, flagship college.
“We go back to 1828, so we have great tradition. We’re the 13th oldest medical school, and we’re one of the five largest. We produce a lot of doctors for the state, we’re doing a lot of exciting research, and we have great educational methods.”
Hess will present his State of the College Address at noon today, Feb. 21. It will be in the Natalie and Lansing B. Lee Jr. Auditorium on Laney Walker Blvd. on the Health Sciences Campus. It will also be available on the Augusta University livestream page at https://www.augusta.edu/stream/
