UPEI medical school project 'on time, on budget,' says university president

Gwyneth Egan · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 20, 2025 4:46 PM EDT | Last Updated: 14 minutes ago

The University of Prince Edward Island says everything is connected way for the opening of the province's caller aesculapian schoolhouse field this August.

Construction connected the gathering is astir completed, and each the parts that are indispensable to the pupil acquisition are being fixed priority, said Wendy Rodgers, UPEI's president and vice chancellor. 

"We are connected time, connected fund and it's going to beryllium ace exciting," Rodgers said. 

The school, which volition beryllium a outer field of Memorial University successful Newfoundland, is successful the process of selecting its archetypal cohort of 20 students — though they won't beryllium considered UPEI aesculapian students.

"These students person applied to be Memorial University's determination campus, located connected P.E.I.," an authoritative from Memorial said successful an email to CBC News connected Thursday. 

"They volition beryllium attending classes and person different grooming successful the caller gathering connected the UPEI campus, but they are not UPEI students and are not students with the UPEI Faculty of Medicine. They volition beryllium Memorial University aesculapian students studying successful P.E.I."

The cohort volition be taught virtually by instructors astatine Memorial this fall, since the commencement of a aesculapian grade programme involves publication learning alternatively than laboratory oregon applicable skills. 

Specialized exertion volition fto aesculapian students successful classrooms successful Charlottetown and St. John's interact with each different and enactment fully, Rodgers said. 

"It's not astatine each the aforesaid benignant of virtual acquisition that we had successful COVID," she said. "It's overmuch much interactive than that." 

Fundraising overachieved 

In the past fewer months, UPEI asked the City of Charlottetown for $2 million successful backing for the aesculapian gathering project, but metropolis unit recommended against that spending. 

That's not a interest for Rodgers, who said the assemblage has already overachieved its fundraising extremity for this year. 

With astir $4 cardinal raised truthful far, UPEI is connected way to scope its extremity of $10 cardinal by 2028, she said. That $10 cardinal volition spell toward the full outgo of the med school, which is estimated astatine astir $92 million. 

Should the assemblage transcend that goal, immoderate further wealth would beryllium reinvested into the aesculapian school, Rodgers said. 

Benefit to the Island

The aesculapian schoolhouse task has created "huge excitement," Rodgers said. 

"At the precise least, it's going to beryllium bringing much physicians into the Island system," she said. 

The schoolhouse volition besides bring amended entree to precocious prime grooming opportunities for health-care transportation professionals who already enactment connected the Island, Rodgers said. 

"We're going to beryllium capable to nutrient that present due to the fact that we volition person capableness successful our schedule, successful our technology, and successful our technologists successful bid to nutrient the kinds of grooming that they're going to request arsenic well."