UMMC School of Medicine

The University of Mississippi Medical Center — Jackson, Mississippi
As the sole school of medicine in the state of Mississippi, UMMC committed to expanding its undergraduate class size to at least 165 students a year (the current M1 enrollment class size is 136) with the goal of placing 1,000 new doctors by 2025. The school never had a centralized location or image of its own, and current teaching spaces were interspersed throughout the campus. UMMC’s first dedicated School of Medicine building is situated at the head of the expanding academic core, creating a significant presence on campus. The building provides an additional 151,000 square feet of varied multimodal learning environments to the UMMC’s campus core.

The 18 small-group classrooms are designed for a maximum of 21 students each. These learning environments are a departure from the traditional rows of fixed tablet chairs facing a lectern. Spaces can easily be converted from lecture mode to teamwork style to group presentation and discussion. Each seat has maximum access to all media devices and offers the instructor the ability to facilitate the content. Network technology supports learning and is integrated into the space providing each student access to shared flat-screen monitors. This allows collaborative teams to share their information with the class.

The large team-focused, multi-modal auditoriums are dynamic spaces. They allow for grand rounds, guest lecture presentations, classroom activities, collaborative group interaction, and testing. Because of the many required functions, the auditoriums feature a large range of flexibility. The spaces are wider, more shallow, and less steep than a typical traditional lecture hall, allowing greater visual access to the content being presented in the front. The rooms’ configurations have slowly cascading tiers, allowing for every other row of people to swivel around – forming small groups at tables. Also, with non-fixed seats, the capacity of the room can easily be converted from a less dense testing environment to a more dense presentation environment.

The new School of Medicine is designed with the hot, humid Mississippi climate in mind. Glazing on the south side of the building is shaded in the summer by large solar fins. Glass on the east and west sides of the building has been kept to a minimum, and recessed when possible. All glass is laminated with low-emissivity coatings and all exterior walls are densely insulated.