The Texas Christian University School of Medicine has announced it will be contributing to the medical innovation district of Fort Worth with the addition of a new campus in the city’s Near Southside neighborhood.
The school said that it plans to drive economic development and biomedical advances through partnerships with hospitals, healthcare organizations, and biotech industries.
“The TCU School of Medicine campus is an investment in the long-term health of our community, training and educating future physicians, many of whom will remain in the area expanding our physician workforce and fulfilling an important need for our city and state,” said Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker.
Construction on the project will begin this year. The four-story, 100,000-square-foot campus will serve as the academic hub for 240 medical students, as well as hundreds of staff and faculty. Additional facilities are expected to be a part of the master plan, set to finish in 2024.
Since the new medical school will be much closer to major healthcare providers in the Fort Worth area, it will be easier for TCU to expand its offering to students and push for further growth in the hospital district.
“This new medical campus is ideally located, sitting in the heart of the medical district and adjacent to our valued clinical partners and medical providers,” said Dr. Stuart Flynn, founding dean of TCU’s School of Medicine. “Proximity of the medical school is essential to build robust relationships and [take] advantage [of] the amazing opportunities that we and our partners have in Fort Worth.”
The School of Medicine was first proposed in 2015 as a vision of a state-of-the-art medical school that would contribute to the growing bioscience sector in Fort Worth. It was created with an innovative curriculum that teaches students how to be Empathic Scholars and walk in a patient’s shoes.
Since the school’s curriculum approach includes classrooms without lectures, it frees up time for studying the major drivers in the future of medicine, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and genomics.
The TCU School of Medicine’s first class of students began in July 2019 and is set to graduate in 2023. Its fourth class is set to begin in July 2022.