Campus could get a medical school

The University of California regents Thursday approved the creation of a medical school at UC Riverside if enough money can be found.

Plans call for the school to enroll its first 50 students four years from now and to eventually enroll 400 medical students and 320 residents and graduate students.

Before it can open, however, the UC Riverside medical school would need to raise $50 million in private and public money by 2012; it would need $50 million more by 2020, officials said.

Campus leaders expressed confidence that those funds could be secured.

The new school would be the sixth medical school in the UC system and would aim at easing a physician shortage in California and particularly in the Inland Empire region.

UC Riverside’s acting chancellor, Robert D. Grey, said in a prepared statement that the regents’ action would allow the campus “to respond to the healthcare crisis that is facing inland Southern California, and we are committed to building a medical school in which the entire state of California will take great pride.”

-- Larry Gordon