Stanford University School of Medicine

Stanford University School of Medicine

Type	Private
Established	1908
Parent institution	Stanford University
Dean	Lloyd B. Minor
Academic staff	801
Students	3,498
Postgraduates	1,158
Location	Stanford, California, U.S. 37°26′04″N 122°10′34″W / 37.43444°N 122.17611°W / 37.43444; -122.17611Coordinates: 37°26′04″N 122°10′34″W / 37.43444°N 122.17611°W / 37.43444; -122.17611
Campus	Suburban
Website	med.stanford.edu

Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It is the successor to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. The school ceased operations in 1862,^[1] but was later in 1870 refounded by Levi Cooper Lane and renamed Cooper Medical College; the medical school was acquired by Stanford in 1908. The medical school moved to the Stanford campus near Palo Alto, California in 1959.

The School of Medicine, along with Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, is part of Stanford Medicine. It is a research-intensive institution that emphasizes medical innovation, novel methods, discoveries, and interventions in its integrated curriculum. Stanford Health Care was named the third best hospital in California, after the UCSF Medical Center and the UCLA Medical Center.^[2]

History

In 1855, Illinois physician Elias Samuel Cooper moved to San Francisco in the wake of the California Gold Rush. In cooperation with the University of the Pacific (also known as California Wesleyan College), Cooper established the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, the first medical school on the West Coast, in 1858, on Mission Street near 3rd Street in San Francisco. However, in 1862 Cooper died, and without his leadership, the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific ceased operation.^[1] In 1864, surgeon Hugh Toland founded a new medical school, Toland Medical College (today the University of California, San Francisco, and the faculty of Cooper Medical College chose to suspend operations and join the new school.^[3]

In 1870 Cooper's nephew, Levi Cooper Lane, established a new campus at the intersection of Webster and Sacramento Streets in 1882; at that time, the school was christened Cooper Medical College.^[4] Lane also built a hospital and a nursing school (forerunner of the Stanford School of Nursing) and made provision for the creation of Lane Medical Library.^[5]

In 1908, Cooper Medical College was deeded to Stanford University as a gift.^[6] It became Stanford's medical institution, initially called the Stanford Medical Department and later the Stanford University School of Medicine.^[7] In the 1950s, the Stanford Board of Trustees decided to move the school to the Stanford main campus near Palo Alto. The move was completed in 1959.^[8]

In the 1980s the Medical Center launched a major expansion program. A new hospital was added in 1989 with 20 new operating rooms, state of the art intensive care and inpatient units, and other technological additions. The Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine opened in May 1989 as an interdisciplinary center focusing on the molecular and genetic basis of disease.^[9] The Lucile Packard Children's Hospital was completed in 1991, adding even more diversity to Stanford Medicine.

Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge.

In the early years of the 21st century the School of Medicine underwent rapid construction to further expand teaching and clinical opportunities. The Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge opened in 2010; it serves as the gateway to the School of Medicine as well as providing a new model of medical education by combining biomedical research with clinical education and information technology. The Lorry I. Lokey Stem Cell Research Building also opened in 2010; it is the largest stem cell and regenerative medicine facility in North America.^[10] The Stem Cell Research Building is the first of the planned Stanford Institutes of Medicine. In addition to research facilities it houses offices for faculty from the Stanford Cancer Center and "hotel space" offices for visiting researchers.^[10]

Academic programs and students

The School of Medicine has reversed the traditional teaching method of classroom time being reserved for lectures and problem-solving exercises being completed outside of school as homework; with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,^[11] school leaders are heading up a collaboration on the use of the "flipped classroom" approach to content delivery.

The School of Medicine also has a long history of educating physician assistants (PAs). Stanford University partnered with Foothill College in 1971 to form the Primary Care Associate Program (PCAP) which graduated more than 1,500 PAs. The last PCAP class graduated in 2018. Today, the Stanford School of Medicine offers a Master of Science in PA Studies program that not only trains students to become highly qualified clinical PAs who can practice in any area of medicine, but also seeks to train PAs who can be leaders in community health, research, and medical education. The program offers a novel approach to curriculum delivery and expanded clinical opportunities as well as interprofessional education, with PA students taking courses side by side with Stanford MD students. The program is 30 months in length and accepts 27 students each year. Admission to the program is highly competitive: the acceptance rate is less than 2%.

Rankings and admissions

In the 2018 U.S. News & World Report rankings, Stanford was ranked 2nd in the nation for research, behind Harvard Medical School.^[12] Admission to Stanford is highly competitive. The acceptance rate is the second-lowest in the country at 2.5%.^[13] In 2016, 7,512 people applied, 516 were interviewed, and 187 accepted for 93 spots.

Stanford is one of several schools in the United States to use the multiple mini interview system, developed at McMaster University Medical School in Canada, to evaluate candidates.^[14] The MMI system exposes candidates to multiple interviewers in a short amount of time and has been shown to better predict medical school performance than traditional panel interviews.

Along with the School of Humanities and Science, the Stanford School of Medicine also runs the Biosciences Ph.D. Program which was ranked 1st in 2014 among graduate programs in the biological sciences by the US News and World Report.^[15] In specialties, according to U.S. News for 2014, Stanford is #1 in genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics; #1 in biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology; #1 in neuroscience and neurobiology; #2 in cell biology, #2 in microbiology; #4 in immunology and infectious disease and #4 in molecular biology.

Faculty

The School of Medicine has 1,948 full-time faculty. There have been eight Nobel Prize winners over the past six decades, and among its current faculty members are:^[16]

• 31 members of the National Academy of Sciences
• 42 members of the National Academy of Medicine
• 4 MacArthur Foundation “geniuses”
• 19 Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators
• 17 NIH Innovator and Young Innovator Awards

Notable alumni

• Lori Alvord – First board-certified female Diné surgeon, author of The Scalpel and the Silver Bear and 2013 nominee for U.S. Surgeon General
• John C. Baldwin – Former dean of Dartmouth Medical School and former president of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
• Cheri Blauwet- professional cyclist, winner of Boston Marathon
• William Brody – President of the Salk Institute and former President of The Johns Hopkins University
• David D. Burns – Psychiatrist and author
• Amy Chow – Olympic gold medalist.
• Alexander A. Clerk – Psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist
• William Frist – Cardiothoracic Surgery Fellow; United States Senator, former presidential candidate
• Randall B. Griepp – cardiothoracic surgeon who collaborated with Norman Shumway in the development of the first successful heart transplant procedures in the U.S.^[17]
• John C. Handy - Physician and surgeon in Tucson, Arizona (graduate of Medical College of the Pacific)
• Eric Heiden - Olympic gold medalist and physician
• David A. Karnofsky – medical oncologist known for the Karnofsky score
• Milt McColl – Former NFL linebacker
• Scott Parazynski – NASA Astronaut, veteran of 5 Space Shuttle missions
• Joshua Prager – pain medicine specialist and neuromodulator
• Mary Elizabeth Bennett Ritter – one of the first women to earn an MD in California, advocate for women's rights and public health in Berkeley, CA
• Val Murray Runge – John Sealy Distinguished Chair and Professor of Radiology University of Texas Medical Branch
• Belding Scribner – Professor, University of Washington, inventor of the Scribner Shunt
• Irving Weissman – Leading Stem Cell Biologist. Founder of Systemix and Stem Cells Inc.
• Augustus White – Surgeon-in-Chief at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Ray Lyman Wilbur – President of American Medical Association, President of Stanford (1916–1943), personal physician of President Harding
• Owen Witte – Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA
• David A. Wood – President of the American Cancer Society, first director of the UCSF Cancer Research Institute

Notable current and past faculty

• John R. Adler – Professor of Neurosurgery. Inventor of CyberKnife.
• Ben Barres – Professor of Neurobiology. Renowned for research on sex and intelligence.
• George W. Beadle – Professor of Biology. Winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Paul Berg – Biochemist. Winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovery of recombinant-DNA.
• Eugene C. Butcher – Professor of Pathology. Winner of the 2004 Crafoord Prize.
• Gilbert Chu – Professor of Biochemistry and Medicine.
• Alexander A. Clerk – Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry; Director of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine (1990 -1998)
• Stanley Norman Cohen – Professor of Genetics and of Medicine, who accomplished the first transplantation of genes between cells. Winner of the National Medal of Science, National Medal of Technology, inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame.
• Frances K. Conley – Famed female neurosurgeon best known for advancing women in American medicine.
• Karl Deisseroth – Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Pioneer of optogenetics. Winner of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
• William C. Dement – Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, pioneer in sleep research.
• Stanley Falkow – Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor in Cancer Research. Conducted pioneering work in learning how bacteria can cause human disease and how antibiotic resistance spreads. Winner of the National Medal of Science.
• Andrew Z. Fire – Winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Thomas J. Fogarty – Clinical Professor of Surgery. Member of National Inventors Hall of Fame. Owner of more than 100 surgical patents, including the Fogarty balloon catheter.
• Ralph S. Greco - Johnson and Johnson Distinguished Professor, Emeritus of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine.
• Philip Hanawalt – the Hertzstein Professor of Biology and Dermatology, discovered transcription coupled repair of DNA.
• Griffith R. Harsh – Vice Chair of the Stanford Department of Neurosurgery and the Director of the Stanford Brain Tumor Center. He is also the spouse of Meg Whitman.
• Leonard Herzenberg – Winner of the Kyoto Prize for development of fluorescent-activated cell sorting
• Henry S. Kaplan – Pioneer in radiation therapy for cancer. Inventor of the first linear accelerator in the Western hemisphere.
• Brian Kobilka – Professor of Molecular and Cellular physiology. Winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• Arthur Kornberg – Winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Severo Ochoa) for discovery of the mechanisms of the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid.
• Roger Kornberg – Winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Son of Arthur Kornberg. Discoverer of nucleosome and transcriptional mediator. Member of National Academy of Sciences.
• William Langston – Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center in Sunnyvale, California.
• Michael Levitt – Winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• Joshua Lederberg – Founder of the Stanford department of genetics, co-recipient of 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Donald Laub – Founder of Interplast, Inc.
• Kate Lorig – Director of the Stanford Patient Education Research Center.
• Daria Mochly-Rosen – George D. Smith Professor for Translational Medicine
• Bruce Reitz – Performed first combined adult human heart-lung transplant.
• Robert Sapolsky – Famous neuroscientist and Professor of Neurology, most noted for his studies on stress
• Lucy Shapiro – Professor of Developmental Biology. Winner of the National Medal of Science.
• Norman Shumway – Heart transplant pioneer. Performed first heart transplant in the United States.
• Stephen Quake – Professor and Co-Chair of Bioengineering. Founder of Fluidigm Corp, Helicos Biosciences. Inventor of non-invasive prenatal diagnostics by sequencing. Winner of Lemelson-MIT Prize.
• Lubert Stryer – National Medal of Science recipient, Winzer Professor of Neurobiology, and author of Biochemistry Textbook
• Thomas Südhof – Winner of 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine
• Edward L. Tatum – Co-winner of 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Irving Weissman – Leading stem cell biologist and director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Founder of Systemix and Stem Cells Inc.
• Lucy S. Tompkins – Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.
• Robert A. Chase – Professor of Surgery, Founder of Stanford Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery

References in popular culture

• Dana Scully, FBI Agent partnered with Fox Mulder, was recruited by the bureau whilst studying at Stanford.
• Bob Kelso, Chief of Medicine on the NBC comedy Scrubs graduated '12th in his class' at Stanford.
• Dr. Cristina Yang, a character on the popular medical television drama Grey's Anatomy is a Stanford alumna and 'graduated first in her class', despite Stanford's medical school not actually having grades or rankings.
• Nick Rubashkin – Stanford Alum and Co-Editor of What I Learned in Medical School- personal stories of young doctors
• At the end of Good Will Hunting, the character Skylar leaves Boston to enter medical school at Stanford.

References

External links

• Official website