Third- and fourth-year IU medical school students may soon be calling IU Southeast home. James Bonsall, Student Government Association president, brought this up at the SGA meeting on Thursday, Oct. 15.

“Right now, the medical school in Indianapolis has enough capacity for classes but there isn’t enough room in the hospitals up there,” Bonsall said. “If the university moved third- and fourth-year students here, they’d be doing their clinicals at Floyd Memorial.”

Bonsall said IU Southeast would benefit from the medical school students in several ways.

“If the university goes through with this, it would give our campus more than just undergrad and graduate degrees,” Bonsall said. “It could also lead to more specialized medical programs on campus outside of nursing. Radiography was one of the ideas being floated around.”

While the addition of the IU medical school is certainly welcome news to some, there is also the separate issue of the economic situation.

Bonsall said the Faculty Senate has discussed how the state sales tax projections are down 8 percent from previous estimates.

“This does not bode well for IU at all,” Bonsall said. “Tuition is going up 4.6 percent next year, and with this news it could go up even more.”

He also said the planned building for the School of Education and Purdue College of Technology would likely stall.

“The building itself was approved, but not the money,” Bonsall. “It’s probably going to be postponed.”

In other business, Brittany Hubbard, Financial Aid director, briefed the SGA on the second goal of the IUS strategic plan.

“Goal two is all about effective enrollment management,” Hubbard said. “What we’re looking at is the student experience and making sure they make it to graduation.”

The SGA will survey the student body in the coming weeks to gauge student opinion of the new strategic plan.

By ZAK OWENS
Staff Writer
zowens@ius.edu