Bobcats are officially in Buckeye territory.
Bobcats are officially in Buckeye territory.
Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine opened its Dublin campus to 50 students in early July, but the for- mal, opening ceremony was held Saturday.
The university purchased the property for $11 million in July 2012. OU has since renovated three buildings on the land, lo- cated at 7001-03 Post Rd.
During the late stages of the ren- ovation, Kenneth Johnson, dean of OU-HCOM, put on a hard hat and toured the three OU-HCOM Dublin campus buildings. From the fourth floor, Johnson said he could view the entire campus and grasp the scope of the project.
“I was just so incredibly proud of what we’re doing here, to be here at a time where this whole business park transforms and watching it from every stage,” Johnson said.
The three standing buildings, formerly an office complex, include multiple study rooms with tall win- dows, practice spaces with patient simulators, a large student lounge and a coffee shop.
“Medical school is a stressful period of time, so the space should optimize (students’) learning and minimize their stress,” Johnson said.
Johnson said some of the most impressive rooms are the remote-learning classrooms, where students will sit at six- person tables surrounding a screen, allowing them to hear lectures and ask questions of Athens campus faculty for some of their classes.
Marching 110 played the university’s fight song for the audience of nearly 400 people, including Executive Director of the American Osteopathic Association Adrienne White- Faines and representatives from the offices of Senator Sherrod Brown and Congressman Steve Stivers.
Several university donors and administrators, including OU President Roderick McDa- vis, Vice President for University Advancement Bryan Benchoff and Johnson, led the crowd throughout the campus and per- formed seven ceremonial ribbon cuttings after 10 speakers gave speeches.
“What a great day it is in Ohio University’s history,” McDavis said at the event.
OU-HCOM used some of its $105 million grant from the Os- teopathic Heritage Foundation in August 2011 to construct the Dublin campus and Cleveland campuses. The Cleveland campus is scheduled to open July 2015.
OU-HCOM’s Dublin campus
was the first goal to be executed with grant funding, which will also provide for research and student scholarships.
What started as a conversa- tion about the future of Ohio’s primary care physicians be- tween John Brose, former dean of OU-HCOM and current vice provost for health affairs, and the foundation’s President and CEO Richard Vincent turned into the medical college’s “Vision 2020 project” — a 10-year plan to increase the number of primary care physicians work- ing in Ohio.
At the end of his first few months of medical school, first-year OU-HCOM Dublin campus medical student Samuel Nobilucci said he had just concluded the “anatomy immersion” course.
Nobilucci said he was drawn to the new Dublin campus be- cause it provided an opportu- nity to help shape the future of osteopathic medicine and education.
“Now we get to take those concepts that have been building for hundreds of thousands of years now and bring them to a whole new area that we can really proliferate with and help a lot of people in the Ohio area,” Nobilucci said.
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