Warwick Medical School - History

History

The school was established as a collaborative venture with the University of Leicester. Professor Ian Lauder was appointed Dean of the joint School. The first students to study at Warwick arrived in September 2000. The School had temporary headquarters on the main University of Warwick campus until the Medical Teaching Centre was completed in August 2001 and was formally opened by the Secretary of State for Health in 2002. In 2003 Professor Yvonne Carter was appointed as Vice-Dean, before taking on the role of Dean of Warwick Medical School the following year.. After Professor Carter's premature death in July 2009, she was succeeded as Dean by Professor Peter Winstanley (formerly University of Liverpool).

The first MBChB students graduated in 2004, the same year that the old Mathematics and Statistics building at Gibbet Hill was refurbished and renamed the Medical School Building. The Medical School Building is now home to the Dean’s Office, the Warwick Clinical Trials Unit and HSRI. The Clinical Sciences Research Institute was opened on the site of University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire in 2005, by Sir Graeme Catto, President of the General Medical Council. In 2006, the School opened a Biomedical Learning Grid for students. This study resource is equipped with up-to-date IT equipment, interactive white boards, plasma screens and PCs as well as more traditional learning materials such as reference texts and anatomical models.

Following an intensive period of assessment in 2006 by the General Medical Council, Warwick was formally recommended to receive independent degree-awarding status. This was enacted on 2 May 2007 when the Medical Act was amended by Her Majesty the Queen in the Privy Council. Independent degree-awarding status came into effect on 6 June 2007. MBChB graduates in the summer of 2007 were the first to receive University of Warwick medical degrees.