TUCSON -- ASU pre-med juniors could be on track to enroll in the first classes at a planned medical school in downtown Phoenix, if they're flexible with their university allegiances.
A planned medical school to be run by UA and supported by ASU is scheduled to open classes for 24 students in summer 2006, said Keith Joiner, who has been UA's medical school dean since March.
UA's medical school currently enrolls 110 students.
At a meeting of the Arizona Board of Regents at UA on Friday, Joiner outlined his vision of a UA medical school branch that will include ASU faculty in downtown Phoenix.
Regents President Gary Stuart said funding sources and ultimate costs for the project are unknown.
"The devil is in the details and we're not dealing with the details yet," Stuart said.
UA President Peter Likins said officials don't want to be limited by fixed numerical figures.
"If you start out asking yourself if you have the money, you'll never do anything grand," Likins said. "If you have conviction about [the biomedical campus], the money comes with that conviction."
UA will supply expertise in doctor training, while ASU would bring knowledge from biotechnology-related disciplines, Joiner said.
The medical school branch will anchor the Phoenix Biomedical Campus of the Arizona University System, which will include the tri-university Arizona Biomedical Collaborative -- made up of ASU, NAU and UA, Phoenix-based Translational Genomics Institute, the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases, and the International Genomics Consortium.
Local physicians also will participate in the medical school, Joiner said.
ASU President Michael Crow said the universities would need to escape "parochialism" that has plagued relationships between the universities in the past -- that is, the limitation of perspective to one's own university and not the others.
"This partnership [with UA] will not be easy because this parochialism won't go away with a snap of a finger," Crow said. "It's part of a culture."
Stuart said he sees examples "almost every other day" that the universities are working out their differences.
"There's a lot of embers smoldering," Stuart said. "We've seen them flare up a number of times over the course of our three-day meeting, but we keep putting them out."
Construction on the medical school would begin in early 2005 inside the three buildings that make up the former site of Phoenix Union High School, along Van Buren Street and between Fifth and Seventh streets, said Sheryl Sculley, Phoenix assistant city manager.
Leasing the 18,531-square-foot space from Phoenix will cost UA $376,328 annually, Joiner said.
He added, the medical school likely will move into a more permanent facility as soon as 2009, when UA officials have fully planned and found funding for a new facility.
Sculley said the city of Phoenix is currently talking with Barrow Neurological Institute, a research and treatment center housed at St. Joseph's Hospital, and Banner Health to partner with the biomedical campus.
Faculty from ASU's Department of Biomedical Informatics, scheduled to launch in summer 2006, will also be involved in the medical school curriculum, said David Young, vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Reach the reporter at nicole.saidi@asu.edu.
