The University of Texas' Dell Medical School will soon open to its inaugural class, according to an American-Statesman report.
Classes are scheduled to begin July 5, marking the culmination of various efforts over the years to establish a medical school in Austin.
Those efforts have been off and on since Sept. 6, 1881, when Texas voters decided that the main University of Texas campus would be in Austin and the medical school in Galveston, according to the report.
The latest momentum came in 2011, when state Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) brokered an agreement involving the University of Texas, Central Health, a taxing authority and Travis County's hospital district, and Austin-based Seton Healthcare Family, according to the report. The next year, Travis County voters agreed to raise Central Health's property taxes to support the medical school to the tune of $35 million a year. Seton, part of St. Louis-based Ascension, is building a new teaching hospital on University of Texas land that is slated to open next year. For its part, the University of Texas governing board is underwriting construction of the medical school with endowment-backed bonds.
The University of Texas is filling and funding administrative positions, department chairs and other key jobs, while Seton is paying much of the rank-and-file clinical faculty, according to the report. Overall, roughly 350 physicians have faculty appointments, and that number will reach anywhere from 600 to 700, Sue Cox, executive vice dean for academics, told the American-Statesman.