New Medical School Set to Welcome its First Class

Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University is state’s first new private medical school in 50 years.

By Anthony Birritteri, Editor-in-Chief On Jul 7, 2018

The new Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University, the first private medical school to open in the state in more than 50 years, is set to welcome its first class of students on July 9. The facility is part of Prism Capital Partners’ ON3 development in Nutley, a 116-acre campus which was the former home of life sciences company Hoffman LaRoche. Approximately 60 students will make up the first inaugural class. 

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the school, Robert C. Garrett, co-CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health, commented that some 2,100 people applied to attend the institution, with applications coming from 49 states and from students who are “the best and brightest from some of America’s great colleges and universities, many of them Ivy League schools.” Half of the enrolled students are from New Jersey, half are women and the majority of students have an average GPA of 3.8 and are in the top 20 percent regarding MCAT scores, he said.

More importantly, the school will hopefully stem the physician shortage in New Jersey and across the country. Garrett said that New Jersey will need 3,000 physicians by 2020, while the nation will need 125,000 to 150,000.

The school will be innovative in many different ways, Garrett said. “First and foremost, we are going to have true inter-professional academics. With the Seton Hall Graduate College of Nursing and the School of Health and Medical Sciences moving here and interacting with the Medical School, medical students, nursing students and allied health students will attend classes together, share science labs and will understand each other’s disciplines and work as teams,” he said. 

According to Mary Meehan, interim president of Seton Hall University, the new medical school is a milestone achievement for Seton Hall, “but most importantly, it is a milestone for the people of New Jersey who will receive extraordinary care from our graduates.

“Our journey began several years ago with these strategic questions: ‘How can we make our nationally recognized programs in nursing and health sciences even stronger, and how can we better serve our students? How can we create an innovative school that reflects the future of healthcare delivery, not just for medical students, but for all healthcare providers, and what more can we do to help the citizens of New Jersey live more healthier and fulfilling lives?’ These questions led to a vision of creating this wonderful facility and this new school of medicine.”

Prism Capital Partners is investing $500 million into ON3. Principal Edwin H. Cohen says he expects there to be 4,500 people working at the complex by the middle of 2020. Currently, there are 500 workers on the site and this should increase to 1,500 by mid-August.

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