Although MSU’s medical students have trained in Flint, Mich., for decades, the college plans to establish a new facility in the city, in the former Flint Journal building, within the next year. The MSU Board of Trustees approved the plan for a $2.8 million grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in 2011, and Aron Sousa, the college’s senior associate dean for academic affairs, said blueprints for the building’s design are being created.

“We have had students in Flint for 40 years — that’s not something new for the college,” Sousa said. “Flint has been a wonderful place for our students to work and to get an education.”

On the homefront, the college has undergone other curriculum changes during the past few years as well. Since they no longer share courses with students from the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, first-year medical student Veronica Arbuckle-Bernstein said the changes have become noticeable. She said most of the transition will occur later in her class’s training.

“Since we’ve separated from the COM (curriculum), we’ve felt the change there the most, since we’re not at the other sites,” Arbuckle-Bernstein said. “We’re really the first class who will feel it, and that won’t be until our clinical years.”

Within the past five years, the program has doubled its number of medical students admitted. Since Western Michigan University has begun establishing its own medical school, the College of Human Medicine plans to close its facility in Kalamazoo, Mich. To house the growing number of students, the college’s Assistant Dean for External Relations Jerry Kooiman said expansion has become necessary.

“We have to provide clinical opportunities for our students in their third and fourth year. It’s not taking anything away from the East Lansing campus,” Kooiman said.

“We are one medical school — we just happen to train students currently in seven different communities across the state.”

Sousa said the expansion will help fulfill the university’s obligation to the community, both immediate and statewide through partnerships with social work students and public health research.

“As a land-grant institution, part of our mission and role in the state is to make the lives of the people of the state better,” he said. “Some of that is through providing education to people of the state.”

On the student side, Arbuckle-Bernstein said it will help expand the horizons of students as well as patients.

“The goal of our university should be to provide not just education, but health care as well,” she said. “Michigan has a lot of different demographics, and it’s important for a well-rounded physician to get that experience.”