UC Merced Magazine | Volume XIX, Issue V

e rst group of medical education faculty — Vener expects to hire about ve — will arrive with a “tripartite job” — learning the UCSF education system, along with some teaching at that campus; holding classes at UC Merced; and “of course, scholarly academic work.” In keeping with the community orientation of the B.S. to M.D. pathway, the rst faculty member hired specializes in community engagement. And she is someone quite familiar with UC Merced and the region — as a six-year project scientist in the Health Sciences Research Institute at Merced, which she joined a er working as an administrator, instructor and researcher at UC Davis. Rosa Manzo, Ph.D. — a native of Fresno County — said her work will focus on building community engagement research opportunities with federally quali ed health centers and local partners, along with curriculum, for the future doctors. She will build on networks she has established throughout her work at UC Merced, in part aided by grants from Genentech, Inc. “Making those connections from the classroom to the community” will help ensure the students become “more culturally competent physicians,” she said. New medical education faculty will be creating a unique path in establishing medical education at UC Merced. While learning the UCSF Foundations 1 curriculum, they will be based at UC Merced; this will allow them to build a community of medical educators in the Valley. “We will be embedding them at UC Merced so that they truly understand the strengths, challenges, and needs of the Valley and of our students,” Vener said. at grounding should help them add some “SJV gems to the UCSF curriculum.” at’s the rst faculty recruitment phase of her own tripartite job. She hopes to bring on a second cohort of educators in 2025 — “any additional teaching faculty we need, but the majority will be clinicians” — and then “phase three is looking for ad-hoc instructors” who can instruct in speci c medical elds. New Department, New Home UC Merced’s Academic Senate has begun the process of consider ing a new Department of Medical Education in the School of Natural Sciences — an academic home for these new teachers. In Foundations 1, Vener said, students will take classes four days per week at UC Merced and the h day will be entirely clinical to learn key doctoring skills. Each ursday, students will be paired with physician-coaches in Fresno and join “very small groups” of fellow students “talking to patients, working as part of a clinical team to address clinical problems.”

“ e coaching program is a hallmark of UCSF,” said Vener, who taught at the campus for 20 years before joining UC Merced. e established clinicians work with students “on their professional identity and growth” as well as medical education, and stay with them until they graduate with their M.D.s. ose students will soon have a physical presence on campus. Groundbreaking for the new Medical Education Building — which will also incorporate UC Merced’s legacy public health and psychological sciences faculty and students as well as the Health Sciences Research Institute, on three oors of classrooms, labs and o ces — is scheduled for this spring during the UC Board of Regents in meeting in Merced. Construction on the 150,000-square-foot structure, behind the Arts and Computational Sciences Building, is slated for completion in fall 2026. e building’s foyer will be dedicated to Fresno developer Ed Kashian and his wife Jeanne, who made a $5 million gi to support SJV PRIME+. Meanwhile, the rst cohort of B.S. to M.D. students — all recruited from the Central Valley — is o to a solid start. “ ey are doing great, and they’re super enthusiastic,” said Vener. “Remember — we feel con dent that every student we take into this program has the capability to do the work and become a great doctor. Students join this program because they are dedicated to becoming doctors for the Valley. Our job is to give them the training they need to make their dreams into reality so they can become the skillful, humane physicians that the Valley deserves.”

Architects have offered a vision of the space in front of the new Medical Education Building.

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