The WMed MD program

WMed calls its curriculum systems-based and integrated: the basic and clinical sciences are taught together throughout all four years. It is organized as a spiral, so each new course or activity builds on earlier ones. Disciplines from anatomy, biochemistry and physiology to nutrition, ethics and health systems science are embedded across courses and clerkships, returning in different phases.

The 12 Foundations courses take you from normal processes to disease and treatment, one body system or function at a time, and basic science and clinical faculty design and teach them together. Four longitudinal courses run alongside each term. Clinical Skills is one; Principles of Medicine covers health systems science, ethics, law, patient safety, research design and epidemiology; Engagement and Discovery is service learning; and Meaning in Medicine explores health equity.

After the Step 1 block, the teaching moves into clinical settings. Each core clerkship block opens with simulation and standardized patient preparation and closes with capstone experiences and assessments. In the advanced phase you take more responsibility for patients, and Transition to Residency ends the program with training for your chosen specialty.

A Foundations week, as WMed outlines it, has four half-days of lecture and active learning, including the Friday integrative session, and on average one TBL session. An anatomy, histology and pathology lab takes about half a day, and Clinical Skills is scheduled for four hours.

Each week also carries several required independent learning modules, which you fit in when it suits you. Some time is left unscheduled every week for individual or group study, student interest groups or the on-site fitness center, which students use free.

Gross anatomy is taught longitudinally: you study each region as its organ system comes up, in labs held about once a week for half a day. Each lab ties gross anatomy, microscopic anatomy and pathology to the course you are in, and microscopic anatomy and pathology are taught with virtual microscopy. Anatomy exams count toward your Foundations grades.

WMed uses a mix of materials: prosected cadavers, student dissection, plasticized specimens, virtual dissectors and models. Prosected cadavers have already been dissected by experts to display the structures. Human dissection is an integral part of Musculoskeletal System, the five-week course that opens the second half of year 1. In that course you also teach your classmates. WMed runs its own Body Donation Program, which says most donated bodies are used to teach medical students.

Two electives add more. Advanced Anatomy Dissection is a one-week early elective, taken before clerkships, that needs prior approval. At 20 to 30 hours a week, you dissect a designated body region and present a clinical case study built on it. Enhanced Musculoskeletal Anatomy, a year 4 elective for students drawn to orthopaedic surgery, revisits limb anatomy with anatomy and orthopaedic faculty, including dissection and practicing surgical approaches on cadavers.

Your first patients are simulated. Simulation begins in your first few weeks, and Clinical Skills puts you with standardized patients from year 1. Clinical Skills 1 builds your interviewing using the Calgary-Cambridge model, a framework for structuring a medical consultation. Clinical Skills 2 adds the comprehensive core physical exam, with heart examination practiced on standardized patients and simulators to learn abnormal heart sounds.

Real clinical settings come early too. WMed says the curriculum takes you to clinical sites from early in year 1. Most are within a couple of miles of the downtown campus, including WMed Health clinics, Beacon Kalamazoo, Bronson Methodist Hospital and Senior Care Partners, which provides all-inclusive care for older people. Some students have occasional experiences farther out, at Bronson Battle Creek, Bronson LakeView in Paw Paw or Beacon Plainwell.

In Engagement and Discovery, your team works with a community organization that serves the health and well-being of Kalamazoo County residents, and may design a project for it. In the fall of year 2, Clinical Skills 3 adds inpatient experiences, written histories and physicals with a problem list, and oral presentations.

Every Foundations of Medicine course is graded pass/fail, on multiple-choice exams, anatomy exams, standardized patient exams, simulation-based testing and professionalism. Each course ends with a summative exam, preceded by capstone review sessions with faculty. Weekly formative exams give you feedback as you go but do not count toward grades. OSCEs run within the Clinical Skills courses, and Clinical Skills 3 ends with a comprehensive one. Standardized patients may fill in a checklist on each encounter and give feedback on your communication, but WMed says they do not decide whether you pass.

The six core clerkships are graded honors, high pass, pass or fail, on multiple-choice exams, standardized patient exams, clinical faculty evaluations and professionalism. The obstetrics and gynecology clerkship builds to the NBME shelf exam, a national multiple-choice test in the specialty. Family and Community Medicine opens with a formative exam to guide your study, and Surgery includes bioskills assessments. In the 2026-27 catalog most fourth-year courses are pass/fail, but Advanced Emergency Medicine and Advanced Orthopaedic Surgery use the four-level scale.

Professionalism is assessed throughout in a Professional Development strand, and commendations can go into your Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE), the dean's letter sent with residency applications. To graduate you must show all 58 competencies in WMed's eight domains, earn 182 credits and be signed off on all 13 Core Entrustable Professional Activities. These are tasks a new resident must be trusted to do without direct supervision, such as taking a patient's history and examining them, or entering orders and prescriptions. You must also pass Step 1 and Step 2 CK.

USMLE Step 1 tests the science behind medicine and has been reported only as pass or fail since January 26, 2022; Step 2 CK still has a three-digit score. LCME accreditation is what makes students in MD programs like this one eligible to sit both; DO students and international medical students and graduates qualify by other routes. You take Step 1 after Foundations, once you meet a competency standard on an NBME practice exam, the CBSSA self-assessment or the CBSE. You need the same standard to start the core clerkships.

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 current schedule, a student starting in June 2027 takes Clinical Reasoning 1 from January 2 to about mid-February 2029. Step 1 would then come around mid-to-late February 2029, shortly after the switch.

On the current schedule, Step 2 CK preparation runs from late January to the start of March 2030. You would sit it from about March 2030, under the new model, on whichever dates the USMLE designates. Both sittings are projections from WMed's calendar, not published test dates.

For the clinical phase, students are assigned to the Kalamazoo campus or the Corewell Health Lakeland regional campus in St. Joseph, 48 miles away. Rotations run across Southwest Michigan and Northern Indiana at more than 190 training sites of WMed's major affiliates: Beacon Health System, Bronson Healthcare and Corewell Lakeland. You need reliable transportation throughout the program.

In Kalamazoo the teaching hospitals are Bronson Methodist Hospital, the tertiary care flagship of Bronson Healthcare, and Beacon Kalamazoo, which Beacon Health System describes as a 422-bed acute care hospital. Tertiary care means specialist treatment, often for patients referred by other doctors and hospitals. Beacon Kalamazoo was Ascension Borgess until Beacon's acquisition took effect on July 1, 2025, and some WMed pages still use the Borgess name. Bronson Children's Hospital hosts advanced pediatric rotations, including its pediatric intensive care unit.

WMed Health, the school's own practice, runs five primary care and more than 20 specialty practices and is a medical home for historically underserved and underinsured patients. Pediatric clerkship students may do their outpatient time at its General Pediatric Clinic. Other affiliates include Grace Health, the Battle Creek VA Medical Center, Goshen Health, Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital and Pokagon Health Services.

The St. Joseph regional campus grew out of a partnership signed in August 2024, under which the first cohort was scheduled to begin rotations in March 2025. Students based there can complete all core and advanced rotations at Corewell Health Lakeland's hospitals in St. Joseph, Niles and Watervliet, which also train emergency, family and internal medicine residents. Corewell says most rotations there have no residents on service, giving students one-on-one time with preceptors.

Corewell also lists an accredited simulation center, a meal allowance and free parking. Students can live at Lookout Point in St. Joseph, resident and student housing two miles from downtown with views of Lake Michigan. Students from Michigan State University's College of Osteopathic Medicine also rotate at Corewell's Southwest Michigan hospitals.

One-week breaks spread through Foundations and the core clinical phase can be used for vacation, electives or catching up. Early electives depend on faculty availability, are assigned by lottery, and some are required for an Academic Distinction. Catalog options include Emergency Medicine Introduction, with three eight-hour emergency department shifts, and Forensic Pathology Introduction, five days in a medical examiner's office. Others cover the history of medicine and mind-body medicine.

The advanced phase requires 20 weeks of advanced electives. It also gives you 13 weeks of flexible time, which covers residency interviews, and nine weeks of vacation to build into your schedule. The 2026-27 catalog lists 153 advanced courses and electives. They range from cardiology, palliative care and point-of-care ultrasound to street medicine, emergency medical services in Yellowstone National Park and serving as medical officer at Pretty Lake Camp.

Some rotations are sub-internships: Advanced Hospital Family Medicine at Bronson Methodist Hospital can be taken as a required sub-internship or as an elective. Faculty select Student Chiefs, who orient and support students starting a core clerkship. After your first core clerkship you can also earn up to 8 credits of independent study with a faculty supervisor.

Away rotations, electives taken at another institution, are optional. You can spend up to 12 weeks of fourth-year electives at sites not affiliated with WMed, such as other LCME-accredited schools, with at most six weeks at sites without LCME accreditation. Each needs the associate dean's prior approval and is graded pass/fail.

Global health electives that are run with WMed faculty take students to the Peruvian Amazon, to Palawan and Manila in the Philippines, and to JFK Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia, Liberia. Study programs run with the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, and Seoul National University in South Korea. Among the early electives, one takes you to India for a project with a rural health institute, and a Puerto Rico health equity course offers an optional San Juan trip, with limited places.

A dual degree adds a second qualification to the MD. WMed's MD-PhD runs with the Van Andel Institute Graduate School in Grand Rapids, an eight-year program with a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology, or with Western Michigan University, which awards the PhD itself. Either way you complete the preclinical curriculum, then the PhD, which typically takes about four years, and return for the clinical curriculum.

The five-year MD-MBA runs with WMU's Haworth College of Business. The recommended plan is three years of medicine, a 12-month fourth year of eight MBA courses (24 credits), then a final year at WMed. Twelve credits of MD coursework count toward the MBA. You can apply with your WMed application or after you start, and you need only the MCAT.

The course catalog also names a 3 Year Accelerated Doctor of Medicine degree and a Doctor of Medicine to Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences pathway among WMed's degree programs.

Each Academic Distinction Program involves about 30 to 40 hours of curriculum, such as electives and co-curricular work. It also includes scholarship: a publication, a curriculum or quality improvement project, or a project linked to an international trip. You can join at any stage while in good academic standing, and completed distinctions are noted in your MSPE.

The research distinctions set clear targets. Basic Research asks for at least 200 hours in a full-time investigator's lab, mostly in years 1 and 2. It also asks for a four-week lab elective in year 4 and a draft manuscript or grant application. Clinical or Translational Research takes up to 15 students a year. It asks for at least 300 mentored hours, a protocol submitted to the Institutional Review Board (IRB), which approves research on people, and a first-author presentation at WMed Research Day.

Outside the distinctions, departments from anesthesiology to surgery offer research electives of 4 to 8 credits. Through the Pilot Research Project Support Program, students work on projects that could attract outside funding. Students present at the annual Kalamazoo Community Medical and Health Sciences Research Day in April. WMed counts 72 peer-reviewed articles by 47 student authors from the Class of 2026.

You spend most of your first 18 months at the W.E. Upjohn M.D. Campus, an eight-story building at 300 Portage Street in downtown Kalamazoo. Five of its eight floors were renovated for $68 million in 2014, and two more were renovated for clinical and laboratory research in 2016. Inside are two team-based learning halls, six classrooms, 27 small-group rooms, gross anatomy, multipurpose and procedure labs, an auditorium, the learning commons and medical library, research labs and a fitness center.

The Simulation Center covers more than 24,000 square feet. It includes a 13-bed virtual hospital with a large operating room and three debriefing rooms, a 12-room ambulatory clinic, two procedure labs, an ultrasonography suite and a virtual endoscopic surgery room. It is accredited for teaching by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and is an American Heart Association training center for basic, advanced cardiac and pediatric life support.

William U. Parfet, great-grandson of W.E. Upjohn, donated the 350,000-square-foot building to WMU in December 2011. WMed says it once housed the Upjohn research facility where drugs such as Motrin, Xanax and Rogaine were discovered. WMed Health's clinics fill a 60,000-square-foot building on the Oakland Drive Campus, 1.3 miles away. Some researchers work at the Innovation Center on the Parkview Campus, about 5 miles from downtown.

In your first year you are assigned to one of four learning communities, and you stay in it for all four years. The communities connect students with advisors for mentoring, advising and career counseling. They are named for physicians Virginia Apgar, Elizabeth Blackwell, Harvey Cushing and Charles Drew. Each year they compete for the College Cup in the Learning Community Olympics, with challenges such as trivia and a scavenger hunt.

Your academic advisor, assigned by learning community, is your first point of contact, with mandatory check-ins twice a year on progress, study strategies, USMLE preparation and wellness. A learning skills specialist helps with study plans and tutoring. Career development advisors work with you from Foundations, with required meetings in all four years. Near the middle of year 2 you are matched with a mentor, usually a physician in the specialty you are considering.

Free, confidential counseling for school-related problems such as anxiety comes from independent licensed counselors, and WMed pays for up to six sessions. The Wellness Initiative, launched in 2019, brings wellness topics into the transition courses and offers electives such as Mind-Body Medicine. Student interest groups, the student council and medical school committees give you ways to get involved.