James July-August 2025 web - Flipbook - Page 71
s president and CEO of
the Morehouse University School of Medicine
(MSM), Valerie Montgomery Rice is leading
a separate, co-educational medical
school from Morehouse College, a
men-only institution that was founded in 1867. As the medical school’s
first female leader, Montgomery Rice
came to it as a renowned infertility
specialist and researcher but has
since spearheaded its growth.
After being named MSM’s dean
and executive vice president in 2011
(she was tapped as the president
and dean three years later and president and CEO in 2021), the college
has tripled in enrollment, including
both medical school and master’s
degree programs. MSM was annually graduating with 56 medical doctors, six-degree graduate program
students and two master’s degrees
in public health.
“So now we’re enrolling 120 or so
students in [medical school], another
90 in master’s, another 50 in PhD,
and we started a physician assistants’ program,” Montgomery Rice
said in an interview with this writer.
“Where we used to have maybe 90
students coming in every year, we
now have 300. We now have many
more master’s programs, a physician’s assistant program and are
about to launch a nursing program
starting in the fall. We’ve doubled
the size of our Master of Public
Health program. We’ve also awarded
the inaugural class for the Doctor of
Healthcare Administration [degree].”
New Campuses & Funding
MSM has opened new campuses outside Atlanta. One in Columbus
opened in 2017 as a partnership
with local hospitals, and another
in Albany opened in February as
a partnership with Phoebe Putney
Health System. Through the More
In Common Alliance, a partnership
with the hospital chain CommonSpirit Health System, the medical
school has opened campuses in
three of five cities so far: Chattanooga, Tennessee, Seattle and Lexington, Kentucky. “This [partnership]
will allow us to open up regional
medical campuses where they have
hospitals and new graduate education programs, so they can use
our model in recruiting students
from underrepresented areas to go
to medical schools and come back
and practice in those communities,”
Montgomery Rice said.
She also is excited about MSM’s
Atlanta campus, where renovations
are underway for two research lab
facilities that total more than 30,000
square feet. Also, the campus in
April opened the Calvin Smyre
Education Conference Center, a $45
million 52,000-square-foot building.
It is named after a revered longtime
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