By RYAN BERLIN
@RBerlin_MSun

The lengthy process for Central Michigan University’s medical school to gain accreditation has taken a step forward.

Wednesday afternoon the university received word that it had been approved by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education for preliminary accreditation.

“I and the rest of the team are very pleased that the accreditation came through. I don’t know if we have been happier at any moment through this process,” CMED Dean Ernest Yoder said.

“In our planning we realized that to get this right we needed to give ourselves more time. Some time ago we made the decision to take our first class in 2013 instead of 2012.”

There is a five-stage process that a medical school must go through in order to become fully accredited.

CMU is currently in the third step of that process. As a candidate school, CMU had to prepare for a visit from LCME officials, which occured in November.

“If you are successful in the survey visit, which we now know we were, you reach preliminary accreditation,” Yoder said.

“Approximately two years after that, we’re estimating the fall of 2014, we’ll have the next visit and if we are successful at that time we will have provisional accreditation. In fall of 2016 we will have another visit from LCME and success then would get us full accreditation.”

Plans are to have a full accreditation, by 2017, when the first class graduates.

CMED’s academic year runs from July 1 through June 30. Continued...

LCME has to make sure that before a full accreditation can be given that there is full development and implimentation of the educational program, according to Yoder.

“(They look for) the ability to asses the students and most importantly, the ability to develop the whole program. That’s what they are guiding through and that’s what they are looking for,” Yoder said.

“(Over the years) we will develop the program, present the program to them and show them that we have the resources to develop the program successfully and that is what they base their assessment on.

“I certainly hope for the university, that being a community engaged medical school in a community engaged university, that this is an opportunity for a lot of collaboration. We will help the university become an even better university than it already is.”

According to Yoder, Oakland University’s medical school, in the metro Detroit area, is in its second year of development and has a preliminary accreditation and is interviewing students for its second class.

Western Michigan University, although it has the donations, is still in the applicant school phase and has yet to apply for preliminary accreditation.

Read more from the original source:
CMU Medical School gains preliminary accreditation