Dean's Welcome Message

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. Thanks for coming to visit our website. We hope you’ll enjoy our vision: different and better healthcare for the future.

We believe that if healthcare is going to change – and it must – then the best place to start is at the beginning…where tomorrow’s healthcare and research professionals begin learning.

We believe that our teachers have a unique responsibility to re-imagine how and what we teach about health. Ultimately, better and more innovative teaching will produce better care and more high-impact research.

Our structure is designed to encourage such innovation. The Morsani College of Medicine is part of the larger community of USF Health, which includes three other colleges, so that our doctors, researchers and educators do not work alone. Instead, we’re teaching doctors, nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists, researchers and public health scientists to work together to create a community of good health.

Our vision starts even before the first day of class. In the Morsani College of Medicine’s new SELECT program for medical students, we are choosing students for this unique physician leadership program partly based upon an in-depth assessment of their emotional intelligence. We’re one of the first medical schools in the nation to use this measure. We’re doing it because we think tomorrow’s doctors need to be people who can empathize with patients and work well with other healthcare professionals on their patients’ teams.

The first day of class looks different as well. In core classes, students from different disciplines will learn side by side. That’s how they’ll be practicing once they graduate, and we think they’ll do a better job if they start out learning that way from the beginning as well.

Along the way, we help students follow their passions. Our medical students can enroll in Scholarly Concentrations, learning about such specialties as law and medicine, business, public health, medical education or international medicine as they work on their medical degrees.

Our students are also busy unlocking the research puzzles that will help cure and treat some of the most deadly diseases. In our School of Biomedical Sciences, students are working on PhDs, master’s degrees and certificates in a broad array of scientific areas. Their study topics range from bioinformatics and biotechnology to genomics, proteomics and neuroscience.

After students graduate, their education continues. We want to make sure physicians and other health professionals learn the latest technology – and have their skills tested to make sure they’re performing intricate surgeries and other critical tasks correctly. That’s why we’re building the Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation in downtown Tampa. This $30 million facility, which opens in spring 2012, will set the standard for how working health professionals learn.

Together, we’re reinventing health education, research and care, right here at USF Health. We hope that once you spend a little time with us, you’ll believe in our vision. We’re all working for a healthier tomorrow.

Sincerely,