Weill Cornell Medical College
The Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences is the medical school and biomedical research unit of Cornell University. Usually referred to as simply Weill Cornell Medical College, it is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Approximately 400 students are enrolled.
The Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, the first U.S. medical school located abroad, opened for instruction in 2004. Its facilities are found in Education City, Qatar near Doha. WCMC-Q offers a six-year integrated medical education program primarily focused on patient care.
Additionally, the Weill Medical College is affiliated with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Rockefeller University, with which it shares certain research functions and offers a tri-institutional M.D./Ph.D. program.
History
Cornell Medical College was founded April 14, 1898 with an endowment by Col. Oliver H. Payne. It was established in New York City as Ithaca, where the main campus is located, was deemed too small to offer adequate clinical training opportunities. It was one of the first medical schools to admit women alongside men.
A branch of the school operated in Stimson Hall on the main campus upstate. The two-year Ithaca course paralleled the first two years of the New York school. It closed in 1938 due to declining enrollment.
In 1927, the college affiliated with New York Hospital and the two institutions moved to their current joint campus in 1932. The hospital's Training School for Nurses became affiliated with the university in 1942, operating as the Cornell Nursing School until it closed in 1979.
In 1996, Cornell Medical College merged many of its administrative operations with those of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S); on the same day, New York Hospital merged with the Presbyterian Hospital, affiliated with P&S. The combined institution operates today as New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Despite the clinical alliance, faculty and instructional functions of the Cornell and Columbia units remain distinct and independent.
In 1998, the college was renamed after receiving a substantial endowment from Sanford I. Weill, then Chairman of Citigroup).
Notable alumni
- Wilson Greatbatch (B.E.E. '50) – inventor of the cardiac pacemaker
- Henry Heimlich (M.D. '43) – inventor of the Heimlich maneuver
- Robert W. Holley (Ph.D. '47) – co-recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for describing the genetic code and how it operates in protein synthesis.