Dear Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, Community Leaders, and Friends,
When the Tennessee General Assembly passed the state budget on April 16, it signaled a new day for health and health care across our great state.
It is with immense gratitude and great pride that we report that the legislature has approved the $311 million included in Governor Bill Lee’s budget to support the construction of the estimated $350 College of Medicine Interdisciplinary Building on our Memphis campus. This will be the largest state-funded capital project for higher education in the history of Tennessee.
We are grateful to Governor Lee and the General Assembly for their extraordinary support of our university and our statewide vision of Healthy Tennesseans. Thriving Communities.
This is a transformative step for UT Health Sciences, as well as for everyone who calls Tennessee home. Once built, the building will serve as a hub for training future health care professionals to practice collaborative, state-of-the-art care across Tennessee.
The building will allow room to expand the medicine class from 175 to 250 per cohort and our physician assistant program from 30 to 60 students per year. We anticipate the new facility will enable the university to graduate an additional 1,450 health care professionals practicing in various fields over its first five years of operation. This is great news for Tennessee and a critical component of our growing response to rural health care challenges in the state!
The building’s ability to accommodate the latest instructional technology will facilitate interdisciplinary training aimed at producing health care providers who are equipped to work together to meet the demands of the contemporary health care environment. With this interdisciplinary focus, we can continue our role as the preeminent provider of the health care workforce in the state.
Our new facility will also support telehealth training in multiple fields and an increase in the use of online educational opportunities for the College of Medicine and other colleges, allowing for eventual growth in the number of academic certificate programs and enrollment in those programs.
However, while the state has made a historic lead investment in the building, philanthropy will be required to bring the project across the finish line as soon as possible. The groundwork has been laid, the momentum is strong, and we are committed to work tirelessly to raise the $50 million in funds to meet our financial obligation for the project. Moreover, every project of this scale requires choices — and philanthropy allows us to make the right ones at the right time. It’s how we deliver the best version of this facility — one that fully supports how all students learn, train, and serve our communities.
We have been fortunate to have many champions for this vital project. We are especially grateful to President Randy Boyd, the UT Board of Trustees, and the UT Government Relations team for making the building the UT System’s top capital priority for 2026, and to our state legislature for supporting this priority.
I also want to acknowledge the stellar leadership of Raaj Kurapati, executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer, and his facilities team, working in concert with Michael Hocker, MD, executive dean of the College of Medicine, and the steering committee including Health Sciences deans and representatives of interdisciplinary training, for responsibly enabling the design of such a contemporary educational building to meet our specialized training needs.
We are also most grateful to our health care partners, alumni, and community leaders who championed this project.
In addition to the multigenerational impact this building will have, it is important to acknowledge that this remarkable opportunity ahead of us is also a compelling endorsement of our current momentum, of the dedicated work every day by our entire health sciences team, of the talent and commitment of our current students to make a difference through their future careers, and of our enduring and noble mission that advances these clinical, educational, and research impacts all across Tennessee.
We express our immense gratitude for the historic support for UT Health Sciences, the UT System, and the people of Tennessee.
Now, we begin the exciting process of building the future of health care in Tennessee together, as we pursue with great purpose our vision of Healthy Tennesseans. Thriving Communities.
With respect and gratitude,
