Increased Enrollment Aimed at Meeting State's Health Care Needs

The largest entering class in school history - 168 students - has just begun its first year of medical education at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

 

And fortunately for the residents of the Badger State, the class includes 18 students who are part of the Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine (WARM), the school's specialized MD program that focuses on underserved populations in rural Wisconsin.

 

"The University of Wisconsin is committed to helping Wisconsin address the serious projected shortage of doctors, which is expected to affect in particular rural areas," says Robert N. Golden, MD, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health. "Our state has a higher proportion of citizens living in rural areas compared to the national average. It also has a lower percentage of doctors practicing in rural areas. We can help change those statistics by developing programs to attract and retain physicians in rural Wisconsin."

 

For many years, class size hovered around 150, says Lucy Wall, assistant dean for admissions at the School of Medicine and Public Health. But the school this year substantially increased the number of students admitted to the MD program.

 

The Class of 2013 enters the year with strong credentials in both academics and life experiences.

The growing WARM program, begun in 2007, helps explain the increase. In the first year of the program, the school enrolled five WARM students, with the goal of enrolling a total of 25 first-year students by 2011.

 

"But interest in the program has been greater than we expected, so we have accelerated the growth in our WARM student admissions the past two years," Wall says. The 18 new WARM students enrolled this year have all expressed a commitment to rural practice.

 

The past academic performance of all members of the Class of 2013 remains as high as ever, says Wall, with the mean cumulative grade point average being 3.72. Nine of the medical students have master's degrees and three have PhDs.

 

Fifty-three percent earned degrees from Wisconsin colleges and universities; degree-granting institutions outside Wisconsin included Harvard, Stanford and University of Chicago.

 

But strong academics aren't the only thing the admissions committee wants to see in applicants.

 

"We are equally interested in each individual's personal qualities," says Wall."We want to know what experiences they have had in life, what activities they have engaged in, the extent to which they may have gone out of their comfort zone to do other things in life."

 

So it should come as no surprise that members of the Class of 2013 include a former collegiate women's hockey player, hospice volunteer, intern for Mayor Richard M. Daley in Chicago, martial arts instructor, Special Olympics volunteer, legislative intern for a Wisconsin senator, rancher and burn unit volunteer.

 

One student has had open heart surgery twice, and two are hearing impaired - all are healthy and thriving.

What people have experienced in the past helps shape them for today and tomorrow, says Wall.

 

"These things are important because they can translate into how you might relate to classmates, faculty, other members of the healthcare team and definitely patients," she says. "We're interested in a person's character."

 

By Dian Land

This article appears in the fall 2009 issue of Quarterly.

Date Published: 11/11/2009