History and Mission
The school was founded in 2002, when Virginia Tech and the Harvey W. Peters Research Foundation worked together to start up a new private school of osteopathic medicine called the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM). The mission of the school is to help alleviate the critical shortage of physicians in Appalachia. The school places primary recruiting on students from a rural Appalachian background, particularly the rural sections of central and southwestern Virginia, Piedmont North Carolina and upstate South Carolina. While students are fully prepared to specialize in any division of medicine, the primary focus of the college is the training of primary care physicians to serve a rural population.
VCOM is incorporated as a private, non-profit institution with no state interest, but it is very closely affiliated with Virginia Tech on an operational level.
In 2010 the school founded a "branch campus" at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with classes starting in September 2011. By terming the operation a "branch" the school was accredited from the start, but it is essentially a separate institution.
Read more about this topic: Edward Via College Of Osteopathic Medicine
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