Division of Biology and Medicine Master of Medical Sciences/Medical Education Program records (OF.1ZBM.1)

Administrative History

In 1957 Brown was selected as one of fourteen child-study centers by the National Collaborative Study of Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Other Sensory and Psychological Defects. In the late 1950s, through the efforts of Professor J. Walter Wilson and Congressman John E. Fogarty, the Institute for Research in the Health Sciences was established at Brown with Glidden L. Brooks as director. From this Institute the concept of a medical school grew, and in 1960 President Barnaby Keeney appointed a committee to consider the feasibility of a program in medical education. In 1963 the six-year program leading to the degree of Master of Medical Science was inaugurated with a grant of over a million dollars from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The program allowed a student to obtain his pre-medical education including both science and the humanities, and in two years of graduate study to take the non-clinical part of his medical education before transferring to a four-year medical school. The medical graduates of the classes of 1969 through 1972 all transferred to the third year of conventional medical schools. In 1969 the University signed an agreement of affiliation with five local hospitals – Rhode Island Hospital, Roger Williams General Hospital, Miriam Hospital, Lying-In Hospital (now Women and Infants Hospital), and Memorial Hospital of Pawtucket (now Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island). Professor Mac V. Edds became chairman of the new Division of Medicine, and in 1965 became Director of Medicine in the Division of Biological and Medical Sciences. In 1972 a program in medicine leading to the Doctor of Medicine degree was incorporated into the Division of Biology and Medicine with provisional accreditation and an entering class of sixty. Full accreditation as a four-year medical school was granted in 1975, and 58 students (thirteen of whom were women) received their M.D. degree in June of that year. In 1976 an early identification admission program was initiated with the University of Rhode Island, Providence College, and Tougaloo College.