The University of Texas at Tyler has broken ground on a $308 million Medical Education Building, which will house the university’s new School of Medicine--the seventh medical school within the University of Texas System.
The university says in a news release that the Medical Education Building, a planned five-story, nearly 248,000-square-foot facility, will be constructed on roughly five acres in the heart of Tyler’s medical district. It will include classrooms, simulation labs, clinical and operating room training spaces, and multipurpose event and lecture spaces for the UT Tyler School of Medicine and graduate medical education programs.
With a planned skybridge connection to the UT Health East Texas Hospital, the medical school facility will enable hands-on learning of residents in the adjacent hospitals. It will provide outpatient and specialty clinical services with exam rooms, specimen collection and processing, and imaging facilities as well as blended programming and clinical spaces for patient care.
The UT Tyler School of Medicine will be the first in northeast Texas and is seen as a critical part of addressing the ongoing physician shortage and lack of health care access in the region.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education has granted the School of Medicine its preliminary accreditation, and the first class will enroll in July 2023. Students will attend UT Tyler’s north campus until the Medical Education Building opens in 2025.
Some of the financial support that has made construction of the facility possible includes:
- $80 million from the East Texas Medical Center Foundation
- A $100 million bond over the next 10 years from the UT Board of Regents
- $10 million from the Robert M. Rogers Foundation to support mental and behavioral health education at the new medical school.
- $4 million from the R.W. Fair Foundation to fully fund the first class of UT Tyler medical students, followed by a $5 million gift for pathways programs and scholarships to cover tuition of the second class.
