CONTACT: Lindee Morgan
(850) 488-4830

By Ron Hartung
May 2010

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A 40-school study called Classroom SCERTS® Intervention (CSI) is under way at The Florida State University to measure the effectiveness of a curriculum designed specifically for students with autism.

The project is led by Amy Wetherby, professor in the College of Medicine and director of the college’s Autism Institute; Lindee Morgan, director of the institute’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities; and Chris Schatschneider, professor in the Department of Psychology. They were awarded a four-year, $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability causing major social, communication and behavioral challenges. The latest estimate from the Centers for Disease Control is that an average of one child out of every 110 has ASD. That percentage is on the increase.

In the CSI project, the curriculum under study is SCERTS® (pronounced “serts”), developed in 2006 by a team that included Wetherby (www.scerts.com). It targets the most significant challenges presented by ASD, spelled out in its acronym:

• “SC” — social communication.
• “ER” — emotional regulation.
• “TS” — transactional support (developing a partnership of people at school and at home who can respond to the ASD child’s needs and interests and enhance learning).

The curriculum already is used widely with a variety of age groups, Morgan said, but this will be its first randomized clinical trial in a school setting. The project will focus on kindergarten through second-grade classrooms. The 40 participating schools will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: the SCERTS® curriculum group or what the researchers call “business as usual” programs.

“Sometimes in classrooms with ‘business as usual,’ it’s a one-size-fits-all approach,” Morgan said. “It’s not necessarily tailored to the specific child’s profiled strengths and weaknesses.”

The SCERTS® curriculum will set individualized intervention goals and objectives for the students and teaching staff. There will be ongoing feedback from the research team.

“We’ll be collecting monthly videotapes of the teachers’ implementation of SCERTS®,” Morgan said. “And there will be weekly coaching. We are hiring autism specialists who will go in and do classroom observations.”

Beginning in August, the researchers hope to have about 10 public elementary schools participating from Florida and California. Morgan said the researchers plan to have Leon, Calhoun and Volusia counties in Florida and the San Diego Unified School District in California participate in the first year, and they’re hoping to involve many other districts in Florida in subsequent years.

“We selected California in order to include a site that was very different from Florida,” Morgan said. Also, the San Diego district is interested in this research and has had some training in this curriculum.

Wetherby’s team at the Autism Institute already has $9 million worth of active projects funded by the National Institutes of Health. Wetherby received a Distinguished Research Professor Award at the FSU 2010 Faculty Awards ceremony held last month.

May 13, 2010

Ten members of the incoming Class of 2014 will arrive with something that no one has ever had until now: a master’s degree from the College of Medicine.

They’re the 10 members of the 2009-2010 Bridge Program. At the May 15 commencement program, they will each receive a diploma signifying that they have earned a brand-new degree: Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences, Bridge to Clinical Medicine Major.

The 10 students are Mohammed Al-Humiari; Alrick Drummond; Geden Franck; Angela Green; Lorenzo Hernandez; Miranda Mack; Melissa McDole; Stephanie Morales; Colin Swigler; and Brett Thomas.

“The success of the program,” said Assistant Dean Helen Livingston, who supervises it, “comes from the ability and character of the students we select.”

The Bridge Program helps the College of Medicine achieve its mission, which includes “service to elder, rural, minority, and underserved populations.” The program provides a bridge into medical school for hand-picked students; their characteristics make them good candidates for practicing primary care with underserved or minority patients in rural or inner-city communities. Often the students come from such communities themselves and had not considered medical school as an option.

Those who successfully complete the rigorous three-semester Bridge Program are invited to join the next year’s class of first-year medical students. And because they already have experienced in Bridge some of the class work they’ll do as first-year med students, they have a head start on excelling in medical school.

“You guys will be leaders of this class,” Jacob VanLandingham, Ph.D., assistant professor in biomedical sciences, told these Bridge students at a celebratory luncheon three days before graduation.

Lynn Romrell, Ph.D., who teaches the anatomy class to first-year students – and who taught it to these Bridge students last summer – gave them a new way to think about taking anatomy a second time.

“You’re like another set of teaching assistants,” he told them. “I really look upon you as kind of colleagues now.”

The Bridge students wrapped up their master’s program by doing research projects, which they discussed briefly at the luncheon. It was clear that the experience had been eye-opening. For example:

• Some disadvantaged patients are longing for someone just to listen to them, said Al-Humiari, who also said that working with human subjects is much less orderly than working with chemicals or lab animals.
• Language and literacy barriers can complicate surveys that are part of research projects, Drummond learned.
• Science teachers don’t do as much as they could to make science interesting in a hands-on way, said Mack, a former science teacher.
• “I love the interaction with the people,” McDole said.
• One patient told Stephanie Morales that medical students made her uncomfortable at first – until she realized that she was helping the students to learn.
• “I have a newfound respect for qualitative research. It is very rigorous!” confessed Brett Thomas.

Dean John Fogarty congratulated the students for taking what Tony Dungy has called the uncommon path. He praised their dedication, motivation and aspiration for success, and he said he looked forward to seeing them blossom over the next four years.

RESEARCH PROJECT TITLES

1. Mohammed Al-Humiari, “Major Barriers to a Healthier Lifestyle of Economically Disadvantaged Overweight and Obese Patients.” (Dr. Jose Rodriguez, advisor)
2. Alrick Drummond, “A Study of Obesity-Related Disease Health Education in a Medically Underserved Population.”(Rodriguez)
3. Geden Franck, “The Effect of Socio-Economic Status and Race on Patient-Physician Trust Levels in Neighboring Gadsden and Leon County.” (Dr. Eron Manusov, advisor)
4. Angela Green, “The Role of Motivation and Health Education on Obese Patients of Lower Socioeconomic Status.” (Rodriguez)
5. Lorenzo Hernandez, “Which Injection Technique Is Best for Rotator Cuff Tendinitis?” (Manusov)
6. Miranda Mack, “Science Opinion Survey: Exploring Minority Students’ Attitudes Toward Science in Middle School.” (Dr. Maggie Blackburn, advisor)
7. Melissa McDole, “Formative Evaluation of an Accountability Tool to Monitor Health Behaviors in Mid-life and Older African Americans.” (Dr. Penny Ralston, advisor)
8. Stephanie Morales, “Healthier Lifestyle Barriers for Disadvantaged Populations.” (Rodriguez)
9. Colin Swigler, “Low-Contrast Sensitivity and Gait Analysis in Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease.” (Dr. Gerry Maitland, advisor)
10. Brett Thomas, “Contributors of Success: Black/African-American Males in Medicine.” (Manusov)

May 15, 2010

Ninety-four more students have joined the ranks of College of Medicine alumni with M.D. degrees. At a commencement ceremony at Christian Heritage Church, an enthusiastic crowd of families, friends, faculty, community supporters and more applauded the Class of 2010.

"You are our best ambassadors for this distributed model of education, based in the offices of community physicians," Dean John Fogarty told the graduates, who now head out to residencies that will last several years. "They’ve invited you into the lives of their patients and showed you what it is to care for patients in these settings. This special training, both here at the main campus and at each regional campus, has marked you as different. Treasure that difference. Maintain your focus on the patient."

Dean Emeritus Ocie Harris, chosen by the graduates to be commencement speaker, said his wish was for them to have "a love affair with medicine for the rest of your life."

"Medicine is a wonderful career and offers many exciting and stimulating challenges," he told them. "It offers personal satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment in great measure and will sustain your interest and enthusiasm throughout your lifetime if you let it. I hope at the end of your medical career you will highly recommend your profession to anyone seeking your advice."

Here are a few glimpses from the ceremony:

• Charlotte Maguire, M.D., longtime supporter of and contributor to the College of Medicine, was recognized for her role as a mentor to female medical students. Graduating students Dani Barnes and Tiffany Williams, officers of the newly established Resident Division of the American Medical Women's Association, gave her a letter officially declaring that the new mentorship program was named for her. It read, in part: "Without the struggle of women like you, our careers as young women physicians would not be possible…. We commend you for exemplifying what it means to be a mentor and for nurturing and encouraging multiple generations of female physicians."
• Class President Tony Sochet had his classmates roaring as he explained to the gathered families what had consumed these students’ every waking hour for the past four years. "Pediatrics was a trial by fire, and a passing grade was only given to the student after he/she had been pooped, peed and vomited on," he reported. "On Psychiatry, we diagnosed our patients, ourselves and all of you in the room with various mental disorders. Family and Internal Medicine turned us into hypochondriacs. Every cough, headache and change in bowel movement became a self-diagnosed terminal illness."
• Valedictorian Melissa Kozakiewicz noted that "the many hours, the time away from family and friends, and the sometimes frustrating situations" can change someone during residency. "I hope we can remember the importance of the physician-patient relationship," she said, "and that we are able to preserve the compassion we now have."
• With the help of literally a busload of well-wishers, Jimmy Moss got the loudest ovation, officially marking the triumphant finish of his journey from childhood homelessness to M.D. Never a showboat, he did allow himself a couple of nearly invisible fist pumps as he crossed the stage with his diploma in hand.
• The crowd said "Aww" in unison as Adam Branoff was hooded, then bear-hugged, by his physician father.
• As Shoshana Hacker posed onstage for her official commencement photo, a young relative in the audience shouted, "Paging Dr. Hacker!"

Also cheered were 10 members of the Bridge program who had completed the rigorous, three-semester Bridge to Clinical Medicine major and received the brand-new Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences degree. They will now join the first-year medical students in the Class of 2014, who arrive June 1.

Dean John Fogarty's introductory remarks
Dean Emeritus Ocie Harris' commencement address
Melissa Kozakiewicz's commencement remarks
Tony Sochet's Reflections on the Journey

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255 or (850) 694-3735
doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

By Meredith Fraser
May 2010

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.— A Florida State University College of Medicine researcher has discovered a new interaction between a cell signaling system and a specific gene that may be the cause of B-cell lymphoma. The finding suggests a similar interaction could be occurring during the development of other types of cancer, leading to further understanding of how cancer works — and how it might be stopped.

Yoichi Kato, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, and his lab team found that the gene — known in scientific shorthand as BCL6 — can inhibit one of the pathways cells use to transmit signals to other cells. Called the Notch signaling pathway, it’s an important mechanism for cells to control gene regulation.

“There are very few molecules that we know directly inhibit Notch signaling,” Kato said. “So that is why the interaction, and our finding, is very interesting to people in many areas — cancer specialists, neuroscientists, and many others.”

Kato’s team produced a paper outlining the findings that was published in the journal Developmental Cell, and Kato recently presented the paper at an international conference in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., for scientists studying early development of vertebrates.

Kato and his researchers have focused on the Notch signaling pathway’s role in vertebrate early development. In their study, they found that when BCL6 inhibits the Notch signaling pathway during the early stages of embryo development, the alignment of the embryo’s internal organs is affected, which can lead to a congenital disorder.

However, the Notch signaling pathway, which creates the equivalent of a molecular highway across a cell’s membrane, is involved in many types of cell-to-cell interaction, including neuron development, stem cell differentiation and apoptosis (programmed cell death).

The fact that BCL6 regulates the Notch signaling pathway could be important for any cellular process where Notch plays a role, including the formation of many cancers. BCL6 is a gene that, when mutated in certain ways, can lead to several types of B-cell lymphoma. B-cell lymphomas, including both Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, occur when B-cells, which produce antibodies to fight infections, mutate and become cancerous.

With more study of the interaction between the Notch signaling pathway and the BCL6 gene, scientists may be able to better understand how these cancers form. Kato and his lab plan to further investigate the interaction’s role in neural development, as well as how the interaction could affect stem cell formation.

Kato’s research is supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program.

Nine of the 94 graduates in the Class of 2010 at the Florida State University College of Medicine got their introduction to medical school as part of an extensive outreach program aimed at creating a diverse student body.

The students, including Uchenna Ikediobi and Jimmy Moss, are part of a diverse graduating class that includes 12 African-Americans (13 percent of the class). In Florida, less than 5 percent of practicing physicians are African-American, while African-Americans make up 14 percent of the population.

Overall, 19 percent of the Class of 2010 is from a background considered to be underrepresented in medicine. During Saturday’s ceremony, degrees also were awarded in a new major: Master of Biomedical Sciences – Bridge to Clinical Medicine.

Ten students received the Bridge to Clinical Medicine diploma and all 10 have been accepted as part of the medical school’s Class of 2014, which begins its first semester in June. Of the 10 Bridge students, six are African-American and two are Hispanic.

At the FSU College of Medicine, outreach programs have been in place since long before the school was founded after the spring 2000 legislative session. Originally, outreach programs were created to bolster efforts to identify students from medically underserved backgrounds who were entering medical school as part of the Program in Medical Sciences (PIMS).

The major components of the outreach effort are SSTRIDE and the Bridge program. SSTRIDE (Science Students Together Reaching Instructional Diversity and Excellence) is an educational pipeline that provides continuing academic support and assistance to students in grades 7 through college. The pipeline consists of several components designed to assist in student development, academic achievement and community involvement.

SSTRIDE seeks to increase the number of underrepresented students, such as minority and rural students, in medical school and other science fields. In addition, SSTRIDE reinforces the ideal of service to others and seeks to foster interest in primary care, geriatric medicine and underserved populations, with emphasis on the accompanying cultural and medical needs.

Class of 2010 graduate Ikediobi became a SSTRIDE participant as a ninth-grader at Rickards High School in Tallahassee. She also served as a mentor in the program. Moss, whose family was temporarily homeless when he was young and who overcame many obstacles before earning his M.D., credits the College of Medicine’s outreach program for encouraging him to even consider medical school.

“I immersed myself in all that SSTRIDE had to offer,” Moss said. “From becoming the vice president of its undergraduate organization, the Multicultural Association of Pre-health Students (MAPS), to taking part in its numerous outreach opportunities, I have truly become a part of the SSTRIDE family. The benefit of having an emotional and structural support system during my transition from nontraditional undergraduate to nontraditional medical student is indescribable.

“The greatest reward has been the doors it has opened, letting me spread my message of perseverance to inner-city youth. The school workshops and community center visits that SSTRIDE has funded let me touch the lives of kids in the same socioeconomic surroundings I once knew as a child. They also inspired me to start my own mentoring initiative, Young Male Empowerment (YME). I have been able to impact the lives of young men who maybe never knew there were options beyond the negativity of their neighborhoods.

“I have nothing but praise for the role this amazing program has played in my transformation.”

Find out more about College of Medicine outreach programs such as SSTRIDE

CONTACT: Marshall Kapp
(850) 645-9260
marshall.kapp@med.fsu.edu

By Doug Carlson
June 2010

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Living wills and advance directives often don’t ensure that dying patients receive the kind of medical care they want — or don’t want — to receive. Now an effort being coordinated by the Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine & Law at the Florida State University College of Medicine hopes to improve communication and produce a clear set of medical orders for a dying patient’s care.

“One of the problems that frequently occur is that people get treated much more aggressively than they would want to be treated,” said Marshall Kapp, director of Florida State’s medicine and law center. “There are many reasons for that, but one of them is that doctors are afraid of legal consequences if they don’t do a full-court press for every patient.”

Such aggressive treatment not only drastically increases the cost of end-of-life care, it most often does not improve quality of life for a dying individual.

That’s why the center is coordinating efforts to promote the POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) Paradigm, a program that is intended to ensure that a patient’s wishes regarding life-sustaining treatments are known, communicated and honored across all health care settings.
There is at least one critical difference between a POLST and a living will or an advance directive, Kapp said.

“A living will or an advance directive comes from the patient and doesn’t have any binding effect on the health care provider. The POLST is actually the doctor’s order,” said Kapp, who added that living wills and advance directives much too often are ignored by health care providers.

“The idea is that the doctor in charge would say, “Do or don’t do these certain things for this patient” and everybody — the hospital, the nursing home, the emergency medical technicians, the home health agency — everybody would buy into this and follow the doctor’s orders,” Kapp said. “And those orders obviously would be based on conversations that the doctor has had with the patient and the patient’s family.”

Kenneth Brummel-Smith, M.D., chair of the department of geriatrics at the Florida State College of Medicine, was involved in starting the POLST Paradigm while serving as chair of the center on aging at Oregon Health & Science University.

”All medical treatments are provided through what are called ‘doctor’s orders.’ If you’re in a hospital, you can’t even get an aspirin without a doctor’s order,” Brummel-Smith said. “What POLST does is take the kinds of wishes that patients state in their advance directive, and converts them into a set of doctor’s orders. Emergency personnel, nurses, and other doctors are used to dealing with that kind of communication.”

Brummel-Smith completed a study in Oregon that showed that 94 percent of patient’s wishes were followed in the hospital when the patient had a POLST, whereas only 50 percent of wishes were followed without one.

Brummel-Smith has been working with Tracy Christner, executive director of Project GRACE (Guidelines for Resuscitation and Care at End-of-life), an affiliate of the Suncoast Hospice in Clearwater, to organize and promote the POLST Paradigm in Florida. The Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine & Law at Florida State is coordinating their ad hoc efforts.

“Our first major event will be a conference Sept. 20 in Orlando where interested individuals from around the state will be able to brainstorm a detailed strategy for implementing POLST in Florida,” Kapp said.

Participants will develop a legal strategy for POLST becoming an accepted document in Florida and also will discuss educational strategies for informing health care professionals and the general public.

The driving forces behind the POLST initiative are the need to improve end-of-life care, rising health care costs and the intrusion of malpractice fears in the health care decision making process.

“The primary purpose is to benefit the patients and their families,” Kapp said. “But I think a clearly predictable side effect will be legal protection for the physician and for the other members of the health care team that are following the physician’s orders.”

Contact: Thesla Berne-Anderson
(850) 644-4607
Thesla.anderson@med.fsu.edu

By Meredith Fraser
June 2010

Addressing disparities in Florida’s physician workforce requires starting early – long before a medical school’s admissions process begins. At the Florida State University College of Medicine, part of that effort is a summer “mini med school” for high-school students.

Fifty-four students from across Florida are participating in one of the college’s three Summer Institute sessions. The college’s six regional campuses – in Daytona Beach, Fort Pierce, Orlando, Pensacola, Sarasota and Tallahassee, in addition to a rural training site in Immokalee – invite students from their area high schools to apply.

The weeklong sessions, for rising juniors and seniors, provide an inside look at what it means to be both a doctor and a medical student. It’s one way to encourage students from diverse backgrounds to consider a career in medicine. Typically, children from medically underserved communities or backgrounds never get that encouragement.

“Our goal for the Summer Institute is to recruit students from rural, underserved and minority backgrounds and, at the same time, recruit students from other parts of Florida who have a desire to work in medically underserved areas,” said Thesla Berne-Anderson, director of college and pre-college outreach at the College of Medicine.

Participants shadow physicians and medical students, visit rural health centers and get college testing and application advice. They also attend faculty lectures on topics such as medical ethics, migrant health care and doctor-patient relations. In several activities, the participants go through training similar to what real med students face.

The focus on minority recruitment stems from the college’s founding mission to help train physicians for Florida’s traditionally underserved populations. A 2007 study indicated that fewer than 5 percent of Florida’s practicing physicians are African-American and 15 percent are Hispanic. By contrast, the U.S. Census Bureau classifies nearly 16 percent of Florida’s overall population as African-American and more than 20 percent as Hispanic. As Florida’s population continues to grow and its number of practicing physicians declines, people who were underserved from the beginning suffer all the more.

Elizabeth Foster, the college’s assistant director of research and graduate programs, traveled around the state in the spring to meet with students interested in medicine and in the Summer Institute.

“The selection process is competitive,” she said. “We sought the best and brightest at their schools – from a GPA of at least 3.5 and outstanding leadership, volunteerism and a passion for science and medicine. They should feel proud about being selected. We’re certainly proud to have them here.”

CONTACT: Marshall Kapp
(850) 645-9260; marshall.kapp@med.fsu.edu

By Meredith Fraser
June 2010

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - To increase the flow of information between the fields of medicine and law, a new center at the Florida State University College of Medicine and College of Law is producing an online journal dedicated to sharing research.

The Medical-Legal Studies e-journal is published as part of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Legal Scholarship Network.

“The e-journal is aimed at collecting information, specifically scholarly articles, about the relationship between the medical and legal fields,’’ said Marshall Kapp, director of the Florida State University Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine & Law. Kapp, who teaches at both the medical and law schools at Florida State, will be the editor of Medical-Legal Studies.

In addition, the Legal Scholarship Network will act as a repository that researchers can search for submitted articles relevant to the e-journal’s main topic. Articles are submitted from medical, legal and other social science-based journals from around the world.

A handful of e-journals currently are focused on the field of health law in general, but Medical-Legal Studies is a pioneer in its field by concentrating specifically on the interplay of the medical and legal professions.

Examples of research articles available through the network include, “Doctors as Advocates, Lawyers as Healers,” “Allies Not Adversaries: Teaching Collaboration to the Next Generation of Doctors and Lawyers to Address Social Inquiries,” and “Fight Club: Doctors Versus Lawyers — A Peace Plan for America’s Most Prestigious, Antagonistic Professions.”

CONTACT: Timothy Megraw
(850) 945-9271; timothy.megraw@med.fsu.edu

By Ron Hartung
June 2010

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - A Florida State University researcher has identified the important role that a key protein plays in cell division, and that discovery could lead to a greater understanding of stem cells.

Timothy L. Megraw, an associate professor in the College of Medicine, has outlined his findings in the cover story of the June 15 issue of Developmental Cell. The article, “CDK5RAP2 Regulates Centriole Engagement and Cohesion in Mice,” was co-authored by researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and the University of North Texas.

In August, Megraw received a four-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore the role of centrosomes and cilia in cell division and their connections to human disease.

One long-term goal of Megraw’s research has been to discover which parts of the cell play which roles in cell division. The centrosome is an important player. When a cell is ready to divide, it typically has two centrosomes, each containing a “mother and daughter” pair of centrioles tightly connected to each other, or “engaged.”

“Two is important,” Megraw said, “because you divide your genetic material into two equal sets. Each of these centriole pairs organizes the cytoskeletal machinery that pulls the chromosomes apart. So you don’t want there to be more than two, because then you run the risk of unequal separation of the chromosomes.”

The centrioles are supposed to replicate only once during the cell cycle. What keeps them from replicating more often was discovered a few years ago, Megraw said, when researchers identified mother-daughter engagement as the key. Once those two become disengaged, it acts as the “licensing” step, in effect giving the centrioles permission to replicate.

Unknown until now, Megraw said, was what regulated those centrioles to remain engaged until the proper time, to prevent excess replication. He suspected that the protein CDK5RAP2 was at least partly responsible. His team tested the protein’s role using a mutant mouse in which the protein was “knocked out” and not functioning. These researchers looked for any effects on engagement and “cohesion,” in which centriole pairs are tethered by fibers.

They noted in the mutant mouse that engagement and cohesion did not occur in their typical orderly fashion and that centrioles were more numerous and often single rather than paired. The amplified centrioles assembled multipolar spindles, a potential hazard for chromosomal stability. The researchers concluded that CDK5RAP2 is required to maintain centriole engagement and cohesion, thereby restricting centriole replication.

They are looking at how this discovery might apply to the human brain.

“The two mouse mutants we made mimic the two known mutations in humans in CDK5RAP2 — which has another name, MCPH3, in humans,” Megraw said. “The disease associated with that is a small brain.

“Our next step is to look at the brains of the mice and try to determine what’s wrong. We think it’s the stem cells — that the progenitors that give rise to all the neurons in the brain are dying early or changing from a progenitor into a neuron too early.”

Another gene called myomegalin might be functionally redundant to CDK5RAP2, Megraw said, adding, “Our goal is to knock that out, too.”

The research his lab has done might also be applicable to cancer drugs for humans, he said. Centrosomes organize microtubules, which are structures in the cell that many important anti-cancer drugs target.

“The amplified centrioles and multipolar spindles suggest that the mutant mice may be more susceptible to developing cancers,” Megraw said. “We are in a position to test this with our new mouse models.”

College of Medicine student Zach Folzenlogen created the cover design for this issue of Developmental Cell.

CONTACT: Doug Carlson
(850) 645-1255; doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

By Doug Carlson
June 2010

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Ten years after its creation and through carefully planned growth, the Florida State University College of Medicine has reached a milestone: The arrival of the 120-member Class of 2014 on campus this week gives the medical school a full enrollment of 480 students.

“It seems entirely appropriate that as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our legislative establishment, we welcome our 10th class and fulfill the dream of our founders with full enrollment,” said College of Medicine Dean John Fogarty. “As the first new medical school of the 21st century, we are proud of our early successes and look forward to continuing to produce the kind of doctors that Florida needs most.”

The Florida Legislature outlined its plans for enrollment growth in the legislation it passed in 2000 establishing the College of Medicine. The plans called for enrollment to increase each year from an initial class of 30 students that entered in 2001 to a maximum class size not to exceed 120 students.

The college admitted its first full class of 120 students in 2007. With the last of its smaller classes graduating with medical degrees on May 15, the college is now at full enrollment. To date, the College of Medicine has graduated six classes and has 336 alumni.

For the first time since its original group of students, the College of Medicine has a class with more male (59 percent) than female students. The class continues to reflect the diversity the College of Medicine seeks as part of its mission to produce physicians who will work with medically underserved individuals and communities in Florida. Twenty-six percent of the class is from backgrounds that are underrepresented in medicine, including nine black and 20 Hispanic students. The enrollment of Hispanic students is nearly triple the national average for medical schools in the United States.

The Class of 2014 will conclude its first semester of medical school with the annual White Coat Ceremony in August.