UPEI medical school project 'on time, on budget,' says university president
Charlottetown-based school is in process of selecting 1st cohort of 20 students
The University of Prince Edward Island says everything is on track for the opening of the province's new medical school campus this August.
Construction on the building is nearly completed, and all the parts that are essential to the student experience are being given priority, said Wendy Rodgers, UPEI's president and vice chancellor.
"We are on time, on budget and it's going to be super exciting," Rodgers said.
The school, which will be a satellite campus of Memorial University in Newfoundland, is in the process of selecting its first cohort of 20 students — though they won't be considered UPEI medical students.
"These students have applied to attend Memorial University's regional campus, located on P.E.I.," an official from Memorial said in an email to CBC News on Thursday.
"They will be attending classes and receive other training in the new building on the UPEI campus, but they are not UPEI students and are not students with the UPEI Faculty of Medicine. They will be Memorial University medical students studying in P.E.I."
The cohort will be taught virtually by instructors at Memorial this fall, since the start of a medical degree program involves book learning rather than lab or practical skills.
Specialized technology will let medical students in classrooms in Charlottetown and St. John's interact with each other and participate fully, Rodgers said.
"It's not at all the same kind of virtual experience that we had in COVID," she said. "It's much more interactive than that."
Fundraising overachieved
In the last few months, UPEI asked the City of Charlottetown for $2 million in funding for the medical building project, but city staff recommended against that spending.
That's not a concern for Rodgers, who said the university has already overachieved its fundraising goal for this year.
With roughly $4 million raised so far, UPEI is on track to reach its goal of $10 million by 2028, she said. That $10 million will go toward the total cost of the med school, which is estimated at around $92 million.
Should the university exceed that goal, any additional money would be reinvested into the medical school, Rodgers said.
Benefit to the Island
The medical school project has created "huge excitement," Rodgers said.
"At the very least, it's going to be bringing more physicians into the Island system," she said.
The school will also bring better access to high quality training opportunities for health-care delivery professionals who already work on the Island, Rodgers said.
"We're going to be able to produce that here because we will have capacity in our schedule, in our technology, and in our technologists in order to produce the kinds of training that they're going to need as well."
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With files from Tony Davis