ECU Med School Opens
This article documents the opening of ECU's four-year medical school after over a decade of debate and planning. This and other articles may be found in the records of the Chancellor's Office, Record Group CH1050, Series 1, Scrapbook File, 1914-1978 in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: "ECU Med School Opens," from Greensboro Daily News , Greensboro, N.C., August 19, 1977
GREENVILLE (AP)-
After 12 years of planning and controversy, the School of Medicine will begin instruction on Monday with a first-year class of 28 students, all of them North Carolinians.
Dr. Dean H. Hayek, dean of admissions for the medical school, said the 28 students were selected for the four-year program from 350 applicants, 280 of whom were from North Carolina.
Hayek said all those selected for the program expressed an interest in family or primary-care medicine and in practicing in the state after graduation- the two foremost goals of the ECU medical program.
“We are trying to enroll students who desire or are motivated for primary care- family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics or obstetrics,” he said.
Of the 28 students who will begin classes Monday, 14 are from communities east of Raleigh.
Dr. Leo W. Jenkins, ECU Chancellor, led the fight for a medical school at the Greenville campus that would produce doctors who would establish family practices in eastern North Carolina communities.
The proposal was first raised in the General Assembly in 1965, but a full four-year program at the school was not approved until 1974.
Some legislators said North Carolina’s three existing medical schools- Duke University in Durham, Bowman Gray in Winston-Salem and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill- were sufficient to meet the state’s needs.
The ECU medical program was accredited in April by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting agency of the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Some $50 million has been spent to establish the ECU medical school. Its primary teaching center, the new Pitt County Memorial Hospital, was dedicated in March.
