Xavier enters planning phase of new medical school
October 28, 2022
By Tyana Jackson, Staff Writer
Xavier will mark its centennial year in 2025. As the university looks to its future it aims to expand its reputation as a leader in the nation for producing African-American students who pursue medical degrees and careers in biomedical and STEM fields.
On April 21, Xavier announced that they were in the planning phase of a Graduate School of Health Sciences and a Medical School. The goal is part of the university’s mission to work to close gaps in health disparities and underrepresentation among healthcare providers. In building a path to a medical school, Xavier has created graduate programs in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Genetic Counseling and Health Informatics, a Physician Assistant program, and a Speech Pathology Master of Science program.
“One of the criteria in our thinking is also where is the representation of African- Americans needed,” said Xavier’s president Dr. Reynold Verret. “Now the piece of the medical school is also Xavier’s commitment to… our mission … to contribute to a more just and humane society. Outside these economic inequalities are the health disparities,” Verret said.
The medical school will serve as a reinvention of the university that will expand educational opportunities for current and future students to pursue careers in medicine. “While planning the medical school and other programs we think about how this new program will help to integrate a profession that is segregated not by law but by labor statistics,” said Dr. Anne McCall, Xavier’s senior vice president of Academic Affairs and provost.
Once there were 19 Black medical schools. Today there are four: Howard University School of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. Faculty believe that Xavier is uniquely poised in the South to join the small group of HBCU medical schools.
“We are able to get really good students to come here and I really see the same thing happening with the new medical school,” said Dr. Corey Harrison, an assistant professor in the Biology department at Xavier. “They’re in a really amazing position right now because there aren’t many HBCU’s with medical schools so this will give those minority students an opportunity to actually become medical doctors,” Harrison said.
Black students in 2020 made up only 11-percent of medical school first-year students according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Xavier hopes to continue to be an important player in not only providing to the pipeline to other medical schools but one day to provide more students with pathways to medical school.
“Right now when I look at medical schools I want them to be high in diversity because I wanted to be surrounded by Black people who are doing the same things that I want to also while motivating me,” said Morgan Banks, a sophomore biology, pre-medicine major from Alabama.
“With the new announcements for the medical school and new buildings on campus, it also makes me feel better about my decision to come to Xavier. I would love to attend an historically Black medical school just so I continue to be surrounded by Black excellence and just to foster my Black identity,” Banks said.
