by Barb Hughes
Groundbreaking ceremonies for northeastern Pennsylvania’s first medical college have been set for Tuesday, Aug. 19 at noon on a site along Pine Street, Scranton, future home of The Commonwealth Medical College (TCMC).  The public is invited to attend.
Construction of the $120 million facility will begin by summer’s end, and by this fall, the college expects to begin accepting student applications for the 2009-2010 academic year.
Named as the first president and founding dean of the new medical college is Dr. Robert D’Alessandri, who notes that until construction of the TCMC building is completed in 2010, students will attend classes at Lackawanna College. “Renovations at Lackawanna are 95 per cent complete at this time, which includes classrooms, an anatomy laboratory, and a simulation center in which students can recreate clinical situations in their studies,” said Dr. D’Alessandri. 
Also well underway is the appointment of medical college faculty members. During the first two years of medical training, students study basic sciences such as anatomy, physiology and chemistry, among others, and teaching those subjects will be some 25 faculty members who hold doctorate degrees and are doing research in their fields, said the dean. “They are highly qualified, respected scientists who were educated at MIT, Yale, Texas A&M, and other top-ranked schools,” he added. At this point, 12 full-time faculty members have been appointed and have already completed curriculum details such as course descriptions and lecture schedules.
Dr. D’Alessandri also explained that the last two years of the medical degree program will involve mostly clinical studies, and already some 350 clinicians have volunteered to teach in the areas of internal medicine, family medicine, obstetrics and surgery, and at this point the college is in the process of selecting chairmen of the various departments.
In recent weeks, the state Department of Education’s Liaison Committee on Medical Education conducted a site visit at the future medical college,  and the organization’s approval of the school’s plans to become a medical degree-granting institution is necessary prior its official opening. “We are hopefully optimistic that the college will received approval in October,” said Dr. D’Alessandri.
The dean commented that once approval is received, the college can begin acceptance of applications from prospective students. Plans call for the acceptance of 60 students for the first year, to start in the fall of 2009; 100 students will be accepted two years afterward, and 120 will be accepted two years after that.  Eventually the building will serve more than 500 students and 175 faculty.
Concerning tuition, the medical degree program will be $35,000 per year for Pennsylvania residents and $40,000 for out of state residents. The college anticipates awarding 35 partial scholarships of $20,000 per year, and to date, the northeastern Pennsylvania community has funded 20 of those scholarships. The college is also seeking scholarship support for the charter class at $20,000 per student for each of the four years of study.
The medical college staff, currently working out of temporary space provided by Lackawanna College as well as Penn Security Bank, has been working with Highland Associates and HOK Architectural to complete design of the permanent facility to be constructed on Pine Street. The construction contract, awarded to the Quandel Group, calls for creation of a 180,000-square foot structure which will include spacious, state of the art research laboratories, classrooms and offices.
At present, a $35 million grant has been received from the Pennsylvania Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, and another $25 million was received in the form of a leadership grant from by Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania. To meet the balance of needed funding, state, federal and private philanthropic sources are being studied, and the college is looking at the possibility of applying for a tax-exempt bond issue in the amount of $40 million, Dr. D’Alessandri noted. In addition, to help meet future expenses, a 2008 community capital campaign with a goal of $200 million has been suggested and is expected to be raised by 2014.
In 2002, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Medical Education Development Consortium was developed to look into the feasibility of starting a new medical college in northeastern Pennsylvania, and in 2007, the Commonwealth Medical Education Corp. was formed to create and provide oversight of the new school.
In discussing the need for a medical college in northeastern Pennsylvania, Dr. D’Alessandri pointed out that a third of the physicians currently serving the area’s public will be retiring in the next 10 years. “There is the definite need to educate and train new physicians who will practice in the area when they complete their studies. We will also work to recruit physicians to this area and to retain those presently practicing here,” the dean stated.
During the next 20 years, the new medical school expects to add 425 practicing physicians to this part of the state. In addition, it is anticipated that some $70 million will be added to the area economy, and will create some 1,000 new jobs. To date, the college has recruited a total of 47 full-time employees and 241 clinical faculty members.
The new college will function in a unique distributive model of medical education developing three regional clinical campuses - in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Williamsport - to provide students with experience in diverse clinical settings. At enrollment, each medical student will commit to one of the regional campuses and will be immediately assigned a clinical preceptor, and in this way the distributive model  provides immediate involvement in clinical settings to enhance the educational experience. In addition to their classwork, each student will be assigned to families in order to learn about medical situations in a personal way for three weeks in their first and second years of school, said Dr. D’Alessandri.
In the school’s 2009-2010 academic years, students will use the temporary facilities at Lackawanna College, and for their third and fourth years they will live in a community hosting one of the three regional clinical campuses. It is expected that three to five more regional campuses will be developed in the next five to 10 years. Students will serve clinical rotations in numerous settings throughout the region, including hospitals, physicians’ offices, health departments and federally qualified health centers.
In addition to its doctor of medicine degree program, the new college will also offer a one-year master of biomedical sciences degree program
Upon his arrival in the area, Dr. D’Alessandri  made his home in Dalton. Prior to his appointment as TCMC’s dean and president last year, he spent 30 years at West Virginia University, where he served as vice president for health sciences as well as dean of its School of Medicine. He was also president of the Blanchette  Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute.
The TCMC board of directors includes Dr. D’Alessandri; John Moses, a Wilkes-Barre attorney and CEO of St. Jude’s Hospital in Tennessee; Atty. Murray Ufberg, Wilkes-Barre; Dr. James Hallock, former dean at East Carolina University; Dr. Robert Wright, chairman; Dr. Robert Neismith, vice chairman; Dr. Linda Thomas; areas businessmen Louis DeNaples and Thomas Karim, and Denise Cesare, CEO of Blue Cross.