Dr. Aaron Bernard, the clinical skills director at the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University, directs Georgina Pappas, a medical student at Quinnipiac, as she examines a standardized patient at the Center for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences on Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus.
The Maximilian E. & Marion O. Hoffman Foundation, Inc. has donated $250,000 to the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University.
The gift will be used to create the Maximilian E. & Marion O. Hoffman Foundation Primary Care Fellowship, which will provide full four-year financial support to an outstanding student in the medical school’s Class of 2019 who is committed to pursuing a career in primary care medicine.
“This gift will provide a tremendous boost to our primary care program,” said Dr. Bruce Koeppen, founding dean of the medical school. “We are very grateful to the Hoffman Foundation for its vision and generosity. Because of the looming shortage of primary care physicians in Connecticut and the nation, our goal is to provide a full-ride fellowship to every medical student who wants to practice primary care medicine, and this support from the Hoffman Foundation gets us one step closer.”
Based in West Hartford, the Maximilian E. and Marion O. Hoffman Foundation Inc., was established in 1982 by Marion O. Hoffman in memory of her husband, Maximilian E. Hoffman, who died in 1981. Mr. Hoffman is known as one of the first distributors of foreign cars in the United States. The non-profit organization donates to groups, mostly in Connecticut, that further education, medicine and the arts.
The Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, which opened in 2013, is located in the Center for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences on Quinnipiac’s North Haven Campus with the School of Nursing and School of Health Sciences. The three schools are united not only in the same state-of-the-art complex but by the same mission: to graduate medical and health care practitioners who will be the driving force for a more collaborative, economical and efficient health care system.
The medical school facilities include: simulation laboratories, examination and patient assessment rooms, high-tech classrooms, operating rooms and electronic resources that enable students to access the information they need around the clock.
The full-time faculty of the medical school is made up of 24 professors. Many of them left positions at other institutions, including Yale University, Harvard University, University of Connecticut, University of Florida, University of Texas, University of California-San Diego and University of Indiana, to teach at Quinnipiac.
The School of Medicine, which has 150 students, is accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, and currently holds preliminary accreditation. Full accreditation is anticipated in 2017. The school is also authorized by the state of Connecticut to award the MD degree. The school is a member of the American Association of Medical Colleges.
The school is named for Dr. Frank H. Netter, a world-renowned medical illustrator whose drawings and atlases have educated medical students for decades.