March 11, 2012

By KALI DINGMAN, The Minnesota Daily

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Sitting in a medical school classroom in Moos Tower, middle schoolers, retirees, businessmen and dozens of others listened intently to a speaker talking about the importance of the brain.

They're all students in the Mini Medical School, created by the University of Minnesota's Academic Health Center in 1999 to provide education for community members who want to learn about the medical field.

Each semester, roughly 200 students pile into a lecture hall once a week over a five-week term to listen to a professor speak about research or clinical applications he or she is conducting.

The two and a half hour long sessions include two speakers. Each speaker presents for about 45 minutes, followed by a question-and-answer session, The Minnesota Daily reports.

"Mini Medical School offers the public a place to learn about disease, physiology and anatomy by those clinicians and researchers at the top of their fields," said second-year medical student and emcee Tori Bahr.

According to a survey done by the school, 71 percent of the students are between the ages of 46 and 80, but they've had students as young as 12 years old.

"The classes bring an engaged group of people to campus who would not usually (take medical school classes)," said Steve Jepsen, coordinator of Mini Medical School.

The school is modeled after the Washington, D.C.-based National Institutes of Health's community education program, he said.

See more here:
U's Mini Med School offers just a taste of medicine