Click here for updates on this story
ATHENS, Georgia (WUPA) — 64 students made history at the University of Georgia on Monday as they attended their first class at the newly established School of Medicine. Chase Dudley is one of the 64 students who got accepted.
He was fixing his parent’s dryer when he got his acceptance call from the school’s dean, Michelle Nuss.
“I knew it was her; I knew what was going on, you don’t get a call from Dean Nuss unless you’re getting accepted into the School of Medicine,” Dudley said. “So it was almost numbing how excited I was. I remember kind of stumbling over my words, speaking to her, getting off the phone and just jumping up, pumping my fist.”
Dudley attended UGA for his undergrad and initially majored in journalism. After interviewing people with experience in healthcare, he began to wonder if there was a way he could combine medicine and communication.
“Turns out that medicine is communication,” Dudley said. “You know what I mean? Being able to listen to somebody and be there and be gregarious and kind and supportive while applying the knowledge that you have gained in order to hopefully steer them in the right direction for their own care which is how I arrived here.”
Dudley is from Madison County, just outside of Athens. He said it’s surreal to be able to learn in a community so close to home.
He says he ultimately wants to practice medicine.
“My goal for a very long time was to go off and then come back here, try to be the best position I could, bring my perspective, and then learn elsewhere but then return so that I could deliver care to Athens and specifically I guess Elberton, Comer, Colbert, this sort of local area and now I don’t have to,” Dudley said. “Now I get to help shape the sort of curriculum and the sort of ethos that we’re going to have here.”
According to the University, the launch of UGA’s School of Medicine comes as the state is dealing with a shortage of medical professionals. The school cited figures that Georgia ranks 39th in the U.S. for the number of active patient care physicians per capita.
“You see that throughout our state depending on what you read, we’re usually at the bottom end of those lists of the physician shortages, what counties don’t have a physician or a certain type of physician,” said UGA School of Medicine Associate Dean for Admissions, Brian Steele. “Being a land grant school, we definitely want to take our university to the people. We want to help fill that need.”
Right now, a $100 million building plan is under construction that will allow the School of Medicine to hold up to 120 students per class.
Ahead of their first day, the inaugural students had a hands-on orientation experience traveling to hospitals and technical schools throughout the state.
“We want to be active learning in our curriculum and what better way to see Georgia than to actually go out and experience Georgia,” Steele said. “So yes, we could have brought physicians from all over the state to come talk to them in front of a classroom or read a powerpoint but what better way than just go and see that firsthand?”
Steele said the students’ qualifications go beyond GPA’s and MCAT scores.
“Our class had over 54,000 hours of research,” Steele said. “One out of every four of our students have already published something or co-authored something regarding research. They had over 36-thousand hours of community service.”
UGA’s School of Medicine is on the Health Sciences campus in Athens.
Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.