The University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine MD program

MOmentum's pre-clerkship phase opens with Foundational Principles of Medicine. The sciences then come through Human Health and Disease (H2D), patient-centered cases that link the biomedical sciences to the structural, social and individual factors that shape health. The cases cover both how the body works or fails and what in a patient's circumstances affects their health.

MOmentum builds on the school's problem-based learning by adding more active formats. In case-based learning a facilitator steers a group through a case toward set goals, and in team-based learning (TBL) teams apply what they prepared to problems in class. In peer instruction students explain ideas to each other, and in the flipped classroom you study before class and use class time to apply it.

Alongside H2D, Professional and Clinical Excellence (PaCE) carries clinical skills and interprofessional education, meaning learning with students of other health professions. It also covers the societal influences on health and professional identity formation, how you grow into a doctor.

Some large-group classes will be shared between Columbia and Springfield by two-way video. The University of Missouri System said in September 2025 that some lectures would be livestreamed and recorded in both directions, and the school's June 2026 update to the Board of Curators repeated the plan.

For classes entering through 2026, the block curriculum splits each pre-clerkship block in two. In Basic Science and Patient-based Learning (BSci/PBL), your group works through one authentic case a week with a faculty facilitator trained to guide it toward a diagnosis and care plan. Introduction to Patient Care (IPC) carries the clinical skills, with a new theme each block, from interviewing and examination to psychopathology and the doctor as a person.

These details describe the block curriculum, which classes entering through 2026 follow. In a pre-clerkship week, BSci/PBL takes about 20 hours: roughly 10 on your group's case and 10 in lectures and other traditional teaching. IPC clinical skills sessions come on top.

Two half-days a week are protected for independent study, with no faculty-led activity allowed. Weeks one to eight of each block are for learning and week nine for exams. Attendance is expected at everything, with absences only in unusual circumstances.

Anatomy is taught with human donors. Bodies donated through the school's Gift of Body program are used to teach medical, physical therapy and athletic training students. The pathology and anatomical sciences department lists human donor dissection among its teaching for medical students, and its faculty also teach histology, the study of tissue under the microscope.

Where you dissect depends on your campus. The Human Anatomy Facility is in the Patient-Centered Care Learning Center in Columbia. When the building opened in 2017, MU Health Care described anatomy labs where instructors can magnify and display their work so everyone can see. From 2027, Springfield students will learn anatomy in a cadaveric lab at Missouri State University, the school told the University of Missouri Board of Curators in June 2026.

In the block curriculum, there is no stand-alone anatomy course, since no course is run by a single department. Gross anatomy, the structures visible to the naked eye, sits in block 1 of year 1 with histology and embryology, tied to clinical correlates through patient examples and non-invasive techniques. Anatomy returns with the nervous system in block 3, and year 4 science course options include surgical anatomy, in Columbia or Springfield, and anatomical science teaching.

Under MOmentum, clinical skills start in semester 1 through the PaCE thread and continue through the pre-clerkship phase. Full-time clerkships begin in March of year 2. The school's 2026 admissions flyer says students are exposed to patient care from their first year.

In the block curriculum, you learn to interview and take a history in block 1 and to carry out a basic physical examination in block 2, practicing with people trained to play patients. The block 2 course includes basic life support certification.

The block curriculum also places you with practicing physicians. In the Ambulatory Clinical Experience (ACE), you spend a half-day three times per block with a faculty or community physician, in two of blocks 2 to 4. ACE is also an elective in blocks 6 to 8. In year 2, Advanced Physical Diagnosis (APD) pairs you with a clinician mentor for the last three blocks, ideally meeting at least twice a month, to build history taking, examination and clinical reasoning.

Outside the timetable, students help coordinate and deliver care at MedZou, a faculty-sponsored free clinic for uninsured people in central Missouri that opened in October 2008. It runs a primary care clinic every Thursday evening and specialty clinics, such as dermatology and diabetes care, on most Monday evenings.

After year 1, Rural Scholars spend four weeks with rural primary care physicians, taking focused histories and examinations under supervision. First-year students can also apply for paid summer externships in family medicine or medicine.

MOmentum's published principles call for frequent formative assessments, low-stakes checks that give you feedback, and restructured summative exams, the ones that decide whether you progress. The grading rules the school currently publishes describe the block curriculum.

Under the school's 2024-25 academic progress policy, year 1 courses in the block curriculum are graded Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, in effect pass/fail, and year 2 courses add Honors. Clerkships, sub-internships and clinical electives use four tiers: Honors, Letters of Commendation, Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory. Each block ends with an exam week. Before year 3 you must finish all year 1 and 2 work, including remediation, pass APD and show you can perform a complete history and physical examination.

The neurology clerkship's current grading shows how the tiers work. It combines faculty and resident ratings, professionalism and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) clinical neurology subject exam, a national multiple-choice test known as a shelf exam. Honors needs half your ratings exemplary, none below expectations and a shelf score at the 80th percentile or higher.

The obstetrics and gynecology clerkship ends with an NBME clinical exam, taken online on its last Friday. In the block curriculum everyone also sits the PCC-OSCE at the end of year 3, which you must pass to graduate.

The USMLE is the three-step exam for medical licensure in the United States. Step 1, on the sciences basic to medicine, has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022, while Step 2 CK still gives a three-digit score. LCME accreditation is what makes students of an MD program like this one eligible to sit them. In the block curriculum, the 2026-27 catalog and 2024-25 policy require you to take Step 1 at the end of year 2 and pass it before year 4. Step 2 CK must be passed before you graduate.

In August 2026 the USMLE program announced a move to designated testing dates from January 2029, with Step exams offered less often each year. Its June 2026 announcement had named 2028. On the published MOmentum plan, the eight-week Step 1 study block would run in January and February 2029 for a student entering in 2027, so Step 1 falls shortly after the switch. Step 2 CK follows a study period at the end of the 12-month clerkship phase, around early 2030, so both exams would come after the switch.

• The USMLE has encouraged schools to review rules on when students must sit the Step exams, so these timings could change.
• Grades for rural clerkships are assigned by the School of Medicine and its clinical departments, through a process similar to the one on campus.

Where you train depends first on your campus. Up to 136 students a year are admitted to Columbia and up to 32 to Springfield; you state a preference when you apply, and the admissions office runs the assignment. The school says both campuses deliver the same curriculum, with identical standards and assessments.

In Columbia you train mainly within MU Health Care, the university's academic health system, which runs seven hospitals and more than 50 outpatient clinics. They include University Hospital, home to a Level I trauma center, and a new Children's Hospital. Departments also name Truman Memorial Veterans' Hospital, the Missouri Psychiatric Center and the University Physicians Medical Building as clerkship venues.

Springfield has been a clinical campus since 2016, with up to 28 students per class in years 3 and 4. You train with CoxHealth, a six-hospital system serving 25 counties, and Mercy Springfield Communities, and more than 450 physicians on the campus serve as Mizzou faculty. Cox Medical Center South and Mercy Hospital Springfield are both Level 1 trauma centers.

From 2027-28 Springfield becomes a four-year campus. Its first class of 32 is due to start in the building at 3737 E. Battlefield Road, bought in late 2025, whose renovation is expected to finish in June 2027. The school's June 2026 update to the Board of Curators planned about 50,000 square feet for the medical school on two floors. Classrooms and student work areas take the second, and a simulation center and small-group rooms the third. By fall 2030 the campus expects 128 students across four classes.

The Rural Scholars Program spreads students across five continuity regions of Missouri. Rural Scholars take three of their core clerkships at their continuity site, or the rural longitudinal integrated clerkship (LINC) where the site runs one, taught one-on-one by community physicians appointed as MU faculty. The program's pages place these in year 3 of the current curriculum. Furnished housing is free, thanks to local health systems and the Missouri Area Health Education Centers.

A LINC replaces separate clerkship rotations. Attached to a local primary care physician, you follow your own patients for months across clinic, hospital, operating room, emergency department and even their homes. Along the way you meet every core clerkship's competencies over the clinical training year. The first LINC students started in Sedalia in June 2021, and it now runs in Sedalia, Hannibal and St. Joseph.

• Students admitted through the Lester R. Bryant Scholars Pre-Admissions Program, a pathway for applicants from rural backgrounds, join the Rural Scholars Program; 15 of the class entering in 2026 were Bryant Scholars.
• Rural Scholars are excused from clinical duties for 16 hours a month for their community integration project, which runs four to six months and ends in a poster and paper.
• Off-site students get recorded lectures on Canvas, Zoom streams of class meetings and regular coordinator check-ins, and the school advises keeping your campus housing too.

Electives are rotations you choose yourself, and away rotations are electives taken at another institution. MOmentum's plan has elective opportunities during the clerkship phase and a required clinical elective in the spring of year 4.

The Clinical Rotation Catalog listed 226 year 4 courses in October 2026: 156 in Columbia, 55 in Springfield and 15 at rural sites, including two-week electives. Most basic science and clinical departments also offer research rotations.

In the block curriculum, year 4 has three sub-internships, 16 weeks of general electives and the ABS course. Sub-internship options on the medical side include the coronary care unit, intensive care, neonatology and forensic psychiatry. Surgical ones include cardiothoracic, vascular, pediatric and plastic surgery, and burn surgery in Springfield, and rural family medicine selectives are offered too.

The block curriculum's ABS course revisits basic science through a patient, disease or problem. You might write a literature-based paper, do original research with a mentor, co-facilitate patient-based learning, write a case, tutor first- and second-year students, or take a global or public health experience. Catalog titles include cross-cultural medicine and county public health.

Away rotations at other institutions need approval. You submit an off-site agreement and the host's course description at least two weeks ahead, and your adviser, the MU course director and the associate dean for curriculum and evaluation must sign off. Only year 4 rotations at MU count toward the school's honors graduation calculation, and rural electives count as on-site courses.

First- and second-year students can apply each October to the Global Health Scholars Program. It combines faculty lectures and discussions, an approved immersion of at least 40 hours, such as global research or an observership abroad, and a capstone poster. The integrated residency program lets selected students learn a chosen residency program's responsibilities during year 4; it neither shortens training nor guarantees a residency place.

• Simulation Preparation for Internship, open with the simulation director's approval once your core clerkships are complete, rehearses situations common in the first year of residency and ends in a capstone project.

Under MOmentum, the Mizzou Scholars thread builds evidence-based medicine and scholarly work into the program from semester 2 to Transition to Residency. In the block curriculum, research is optional, as one way to complete the year 4 ABS course. Rising second-year students can apply for the Summer Research Fellowship, eight to 10 weeks on a faculty-proposed project with a $3,000 stipend.

The Tom and Anne Smith MD-PhD Program trains physician-scientists over seven to eight years. The program's page, written around the block curriculum, gives the usual path as the patient-based learning curriculum in years 1 and 2 and doctoral coursework in years 3 to 5. Clerkships then run alongside the dissertation in years 6 to 8, though scheduling is flexible.

PhD fields include translational biosciences, biochemistry, microbiology, immunology, pathology, and pharmacology and physiology. You rotate through labs to choose a supervisor and have co-mentors for the science and the clinical side. MD-PhD students entering in 2027 start on June 7, 2027, to join the Summer Research Fellowship and rotate with faculty seeking PhD students.

After acceptance to the medical school, a dual-degree committee can also approve a combined MD and MS or MD and PhD, in a School of Medicine program or elsewhere on campus. A zero-credit practicum keeps up the clinical skills of students away on research or fellowship leave.

The pathology department's Post-Sophomore Fellowship is currently a paid year out after year 2. On leave from the curriculum, you spend July to June in the pathology department with responsibility similar to a first-year pathology resident. You rotate through surgical pathology, autopsy, the blood bank, microbiology, hematology, chemistry and cytopathology.

The Patient-Centered Care Learning Center, the school's medical education building in Columbia, opened in July 2017. MU Health Care's account of the opening describes no traditional lecture hall. Instead there are flexible classrooms with movable furniture for discussion groups, and exam rooms where instructors can watch students talk with actors playing patients.

The Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Clinical Simulation Center in Columbia uses manikins that breathe, have a pulse and react to drugs, along with simulated participants. You practice procedures, communication and teamwork with real-time feedback and no risk to patients.

Springfield's simulation center opened in 2020. A 2022 school story described 10,000 square feet with four simulation rooms, six clinic rooms for examining patient actors and two procedure rooms for laparoscopic training and suturing. A birthing simulator lets students rehearse a delivery right before a labor and delivery shift. The school's June 2026 update to the Board of Curators said the simulation center is due to move into the Battlefield Road building in June 2027.

The school's faculty liaison for student coaching, a psychiatrist, meets individually with every first- and second-year student for a wellness check-in, and offers coaching and referrals for treatment, testing or therapy. Each class elects two wellness representatives, who plan programs with the medical education office.

Health and Wellness Block Talks currently run every block, at noon with lunch, on topics from mental health and fitness to burnout, coping with failure and mindfulness. The student labs stock art supplies, exercise bikes and sports equipment. Events also mark Show Me Compassionate Medical Education Day, which Missouri recognized in law to raise awareness of medical student well-being.

Mentoring is built into the current curriculum: a clinician mentor in year 2, a resident mentor for each student on the neurology clerkship, and an adviser who helps plan year 4 and approves changes. Student interest groups, coordinated by the Medical Student Affairs Council, each have student leaders and a faculty adviser.