The University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, also known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM), is an accredited medical school located in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1951, it is the second medical school in the University of California system, after the UCSF School of Medicine. The school was renamed in 2001 in honor of media mogulDavid Geffen who donated $200 million in unrestricted funds.
For many years, dating back to when it first affiliated with the University of California in 1873, the UCSF School of Medicine was the only public medical school in California. This made sense in the late 19th century when most of California's population lived in Northern California and Southern California was a lightly populated desert. It no longer made sense by the 1940s, after Los Angeles had overtaken San Francisco to become the leading metropolis on the West Coast of the United States. Dr.Elmer Belt was instrumental in lobbying for the establishment of the School.[2]
Therefore, in 1945, the Board of Regents voted to establish a medical school at UCLA. In 1947, Stafford L. Warren was appointed as the first dean. Warren had served on the Manhattan Project while on leave from his post at University of Rochester School of Medicine. His choice of core faculty consisted of his former associates at Rochester in Andrew Dowdy as the first professor of radiology, John Lawrence as the first professor of medicine, and Charles Carpenter as the first professor of infectious diseases. Along with William Longmire Jr., a 34-year-old surgeon from Johns Hopkins, the group was called the Founding Five.
The building of the medical center and the School of Medicine began in 1949. The 1951 charter class consisted of 26 men and 2 women. Initially, there were 15 faculty members, although that number had increased to 43 by 1955 when the charter class graduated. The first classes were conducted in the reception lounge of the old Religious Conference Building on Le Conte Avenue. Clinical education was initially conducted on the wards of Harbor General Hospital, which today is Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.[3]
The school continued its growth in the 1970s, becoming affiliated with VA facilities as well as Olive View–UCLA Medical Center. In 1974, the school co-founded the Biomedical Sciences Program with UC Riverside, which offers 24 students each year the opportunity to earn both the B.S. and M.D. degrees in seven years instead of the traditional eight.
1981 saw the dedication of the Doris and Louis Factor Health Sciences Building which houses the School of Nursing and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 1987, construction began on UCLA Medical Plaza, an outpatient facility located across the street from the main hospital.
Post-Mellinkoff era
Kenneth I. Shine succeeded Sherman Mellinkoff as dean in 1986. In 1992 Shine left UCLA to become President of the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. Gerald S. Levey was then appointed provost of medical sciences and dean of the medical school in 1994. Levey oversaw expansion of interdisciplinary research and the establishment of a Department of Human Genetics. The Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center, as well as the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, were constructed. In October 2008, Levey announced that he would be stepping down from the position of Dean in 2009.[citation needed]
Effective February 2010, A. Eugene Washington was appointed Dean of the UCLA School of Medicine and Vice-Chancellor of Health Sciences at UCLA. Washington, a clinician, academician, researcher, and university administrator, was recruited from UCSF, where he served as Vice-Chancellor and Provost, as well as Professor of gynecology, epidemiology, and health policy. Washington is the first African-American to hold these leadership posts at UCLA.[4]
In the rankings released for 2022–23, U.S. News & World Report ranked David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA at No. 19 in the U.S. in research and ranked UCLA Medical Center at No. 5.[5][6]
Affiliated hospitals
Notable hospitals and Medical Centers affiliated with UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine are:[7]
The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA accepts applications for summer academic enrichment programs. These programs include the Premedical/Predental Enrichment Program (PREP), Summer Medical Dental Education Program (SMDEP), and the Re-Application Post baccalaureate Program (RAP). Application deadlines are March 1 for the PREP and SMDEP programs, while the RAP program has a deadline of May 15.[10]
Arie S. Belldegrun, FACS; a director of the UCLA Institute of UrologicOncology; Professor and Chief of Urologic Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine;[11] holds the Roy and Carol Doumani Chair in Urologic Oncology;[12]Clinical Director of the UCLA Prostate Disease Research Program; Surgical Director of the UCLA Kidney Cancer Program[13][14]
Selma Calmes, co-founder of the Anesthesia History Association, former vice-chair of the department of anesthesiology[15]
Bruce Dobkin, director of neurological rehabilitation and editor-in-chief of the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair[16]
Robert Peter Gale FACP, FRSM, expert in leukemia therapy and bone marrow transplants; helped the Soviet Union and Japanese governments mitigate the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power faculty accidents
Susan Perlman, Professor in the Department of Neurology
Michael E. Phelps, one of the inventors of the positron emission tomography (PET) scanner; chairman and Norton Simon Professor of the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology; director of the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging
^Arthur, Ransom (1992). By the Old Pacific's Rolling Waters: Birth of the UCLA School of Medicine. Los Angeles: UCLA School of Medicine. pp. 68, 99–101.
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