There’s something special about the start of the fall semester each year on our campus.
As a new academic year begins, we greet the students who will learn, grow and prepare to serve patients and communities in the years ahead. This year, UC San Diego Health Sciences welcomes more than 650 new students, bringing the total enrollment across our three schools to more than 2,500 students.
And what a journey they have ahead of them. As the region’s only academic medical center, we bring education, discovery and patient care together in ways that create a distinctive experience for our students and trainees. Learning doesn’t happen apart from research or the people we serve. It happens alongside them.
Across our schools, learning happens in simulation centers, laboratories, clinics and countless other spaces where students can put knowledge into practice, collaborate across disciplines and begin imagining the physicians, pharmacists and health professionals they aspire to become.
That journey is already taking shape in exciting ways. A recent $5 million gift from Joseph and Honmai Goodman is helping expand hands-on education, research and innovation at the intersection of surgery and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI). Through support for the Center for the Future of Surgery, Simulation Training Center and Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation, the gift is helping prepare students and trainees to engage with technologies that are transforming health care — and ultimately benefiting patients.
And while technology and innovation are transforming how our students learn, great teaching remains at the heart of their experience.
Behind every opportunity, new discovery and challenge is a faculty member who brings expertise, curiosity and a commitment to student success. Our UC San Diego Health Sciences community is shaped by educators who are repeatedly honored for their innovative thinking and mentorship.
This academic year is one we embark on together, and I look ahead with optimism. There is much we will accomplish as a Health Sciences community, and even more that our students will build upon for years to come, as learning and discovery give shape to their futures and inspire what comes next.
