Trustees OK plan to build college of osteopathic medicine on campus

The board of trustees at Marian University in Indianapolis has approved plans to build a college of osteopathic medicine on campus. (Submitted photo)

By John Shaughnessy

The board of trustees at Marian University in Indianapolis has approved plans to build a college of osteopathic medicine on campus, university officials announced on June 16.

The news came five months after Marian’s President Daniel Elsener announced the university’s plan to start Indiana’s first college of osteopathic medicine by 2012.

“This is an exciting time at Marian University,” said Greg Ginder, the university’s vice president of finance and business operations. “The faculty, the administration, the staff and the students are all excited that it will be on campus.”

Several off-campus sites had also been considered for the location of the medical school at Marian University—which will be only the second medical school in Indiana.

University officials provided three main reasons why an on-campus site at the corner of Cold Spring Road and 30th Street was chosen for the medical school:

• The site supports the future growth and enhancement of Marian University’s academic programs, including planned graduate programs in nursing, science and business.
• The site will be a catalyst for future growth on the west side of Indianapolis, and will complement a bioscience corridor being developed along 16th Street.
• The site is both efficient and cost-effective because it is already owned by the university.

“Our target date for our first class is August of 2012,” Ginder said. “It’s very exciting and challenging. There’s still a lot of planning and development to be done.

“We will target 150 graduates per class. Over the course of four years, we will have 600 students. It takes four years to get a degree in osteopathic medicine.”

He also noted that the building for the medical school will “support our undergraduate studies as well as our graduate studies.”

“It will also provide an opportunity to integrate our nursing curriculum into our medical school curriculum,” Ginder noted.

Marian University will be the first Catholic university in the United States to have a college of osteopathic medicine. University officials said that osteopathic medicine’s commitment to treating the whole person—body, mind and spirit—is consistent with the emphasis that Marian University uses with its students.

Indianapolis architectural firm Schmidt Associates is the lead architect for the medical school project. While a construction sign was placed at the site of the future medical school on June 15, university officials stressed that the building and the site plan are still in the design phase. †