On November 1, 1843, under President George Edmond Pierce, five faculty members including Jared Potter Kirtland and John Delamater, and sixty-seven students began the first medical lectures at the Medical Department of Western Reserve College (also known as the Cleveland Medical College) in Hudson, Ohio.[3][4] Kirtland and Delamater had previously been instructors at a medical college started in 1834, the Medical Department of Willoughby University of Lake Erie, which had closed in 1843 due to faculty disagreements.[3] Other faculty from that Medical Department went on to found Willoughby Medical College of Columbus, a precursor to the Ohio State University College of Medicine.[5]
Medical Department of Western Reserve College 1843-1885 located at E. 9th and St. Clair.Emily Blackwell – 1854 MD alumna. CaseMed graduated six of the first seven women to receive U.S. medical degrees.
In 1852, the medical school became the second in the U.S. to graduate a woman, Nancy Talbot Clark. 1854 MD alumna, Emily Blackwell became the third woman in the US to receive a regular medical degree. Six of the first seven women in the United States to receive medical degrees from recognized allopathic medical schools graduated from Western Reserve University between 1850 and 1856, which included Marie Zakrzewska.
In 1909, Abraham Flexner surveyed and evaluated each of the 155 medical schools then extant in North America, with his results published the following year in what came to be known as the Flexner Report. The results proved shocking: most "medical schools," for example, had entrance requirements no more stringent than either high school diploma or "rudiments or the recollection of a common school education."
Cover of the Medical School catalog of 1868–69.
Only sixteen schools required at least two years of college as an entrance requirement, and of these, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Western Reserve were the only schools to require an undergraduate degree. Although Johns Hopkins represented his ideal, Flexner also singled out the Medical Department of Western Reserve University for its praiseworthy admission standards and facilities. Flexner referred to Western Reserve as "already one of the substantial schools in the country." In a letter to Western Reserve president Charles Franklin Thwing he said, "The Medical Department of Western Reserve University is, next to Johns Hopkins..., the best in the country."
A little over 40 years later, in 1952, the Western Reserve University School of Medicine revolutionized medical education with the "new curriculum of 1952" and more advanced stages in 1968. This was the most progressive medical curriculum in the country at that time, integrating the basic and clinical sciences.[6][7]L. O. Krampitz chaired the subcommittee which implemented the curriculum reform.[8]
In 2019, the School of Medicine relocated to the Samson Pavilion Health Education Campus on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic, a $515 million building project, amid a multi-million dollar joint fundraising campaign between CWRU and the Cleveland Clinic.[9] The campus houses students Case Western Reserve School of Medicine (CCLCM and traditional MD programs), Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and Case School of Dental Medicine, all of which—with the exception of CCLCM—had previously held classes on the campus of CWRU and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.[10] The move, announced in 2013, was a major contributing factor for University Hospitals to shift its name from University Hospitals Case Medical Center to University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center in 2016, as well as renegotiate its affiliation agreement with CWRU that same year.[11]
Prospective students have the option of three degree paths leading to a medical degree at the School of Medicine: the University Program, the College Program, or the Medical Scientist Training Program.
The University Program is a traditional four-year Doctor of Medicine program designed to train well-rounded physicians in a curriculum called the Western Reserve2 (WR2) which is built on four cornerstones of clinical mastery, research and scholarship, leadership, and civic professionalism to prepare students for the ongoing practice of evidence-based medicine in the rapidly changing healthcare environment of the 21st century. The goal of this program is to challenge students so that they affect positive change through treating disease, promoting health, and understanding the social and behavioral context of illness. The four-year curriculum unites the disciplines of medicine and public health into a single, integrated program that trains future physicians to consider the interplay between the biology of disease and the social and behavioral context of illness, between the care of the individual patient and the health of the public, and between clinical medicine and population medicine.
The Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine[edit]
The Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine (CCLCM) is an educational program within the CWRU School of Medicine administered in conjunction with Cleveland Clinic. The program is five years, including a dedicated year for research. The Cleveland Clinic established the school in 2002 with a $100 million gift from Norma and Al Lerner,[12] and CCLCM accepted its first class of students in 2004.[13] Physician researcher Eric Topol played an important role in securing the donation from the Lerner family.[14] Topol served as Provost and Chief Academic Officer at CCLCM until 2006, when his position was eliminated amid controversy regarding his criticism of Vioxx and disagreements with other Cleveland Clinic leaders, including then-CEO Toby Cosgrove.[15]
The class size each year is 32 students, and the curriculum is notable for its lack of class rank, pre-clinical or clinical grading, or end-of-course examinations.[13] In 2008, Cleveland Clinic announced that all students entering the program would receive full-tuition scholarships, representing the first medical school program in the United States not to charge students tuition.[16] The Cleveland Clinic, rather than CWRU, is responsible for all financial aspects of the school.[13] Administration of the school, including deans, administrative staff, and admissions, is separate from the School of Medicine, which provides oversight over academic affairs at CCLCM.[13]
The Medical Scientist Training Program awards MD and PhD degrees upon graduation. Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine was the first medical school to offer the dual degree MD-PhD program to its students in 1956, nearly a decade before the National Institutes of Health developed the first Medical Scientist Training Program.[17]
In 2002, the School of Medicine became the third institution in history to receive the highest review possible from the body that grants accreditation to U.S. and Canadian medical degree programs, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education.[18]
The CWRU School of Medicine School is divided into six societies named after famous CaseMed alums. Upon matriculation, students in the University Program and MSTP are assigned to a society. Each has a Society Dean who serves as an academic and career adviser to the students.[20] The societies are:[20]
Every year, the six societies compete in "ISC Picnic" for the infamous Society Cup in a series of events (e.g. soccer, flag football, relay races etc.).
Every year, students at Case Western Reserve SOM write, direct and perform a full-length musical parody, lampooning Case Western Reserve, their professors, and themselves. It is a longstanding tradition that began in the 1980's and in recent years, the show has been a benefit for the Student Run Health Clinic.[21]
CaseMed is located 15 minutes from downtown Cleveland.
During 2007, the economic impact of the School of Medicine and its affiliates on the State of Ohio equaled $5.82 billion and accounted for more than 65,000 Ohio jobs.[22]
The role of Case Western Reserve University in the Cleveland economy has been reported on by The Economist magazine.[23]
Nancy Talbot Clark (1852 MD alumna)[24] - second woman in the United States to earn a medical degree.†
Emily Blackwell (1854 MD alumna)[25] - third woman in the United States to earn a medical degree and the sister of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree.†
Shaw Loo (1867 MD alumnus) - the first Western-trained Burmese physician.[31]
†Six of the first seven women in the United States to receive medical degrees from recognized allopathic medical schools graduated from Western Reserve University (as it was called then) between 1850 and 1856.
2003 - Peter Agre (1978 Internal Medicine alumnus), Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering Aquaporins that transport salts and water into and out of cells, leading to a better understanding of many diseases of the kidney, heart, muscles and nervous system.[41]
Jesse Leonard Steinfeld (1949 MD alumnus) - U.S. Surgeon General (1969 to 1973), most noted for achieving widespread fluoridation of water, requiring prescription drugs to be effective, and strengthening the Surgeon General's Warning on cigarettes.[46]
