Utah launches new medical school with early clinical immersion and team-based learning

The University of Utah inaugurated the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine in a $215 million facility on its upper campus, designed to shift medical education toward early, immersive clinical experience. Dean Kristina Callis Duffin explained that the revamped four-year curriculum eliminates the conventional two-year classroom-only phase, instead embedding patient encounters and longitudinal clerkships from day one, with students rotating through multiple specialties each week.

The program also emphasizes team-based learning alongside nursing, pharmacy and physician-assistant cohorts, supported by the Dumke Advanced Simulation Center and a new Global Health Pavilion named for Russell M. Nelson. Executive vice president for health sciences Bob Carter noted the school’s role in training roughly two-thirds of Utah’s physicians and its potential to alleviate the state’s shortage of rural primary-care doctors by admitting 10 students to a Southern Utah Regional Medical Campus.

Funding came from a $110 million joint gift by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation, with the school bearing the name of philanthropist Spencer Fox Eccles. The facility can eventually accommodate an additional 40-50 students, expanding capacity as the curriculum matures.