Like many community members, faculty at KU School of Medicine-Wichita have been sneaking peeks at the new Wichita Biomedical Campus taking shape downtown. The difference is, they’ll soon be working in the prominent structure going up at Broadway and William streets.

“I love to go by and see it,” said Brian Pate, M.D., chair of the KU Wichita Department of Pediatrics. “It’s like you plant a seed in the spring and all of sudden you get a beautiful flower.”

Construction isn’t quite that fast: The first group of students is expected to enter the new campus in fall 2027. But architectural renderings and the construction underway leave no doubt the building will be a bold addition to the city center. The first phase is a $205 million, eight-story, 350,000-square-foot tower with a stair-stepped silhouette, terra cotta panels and plenty of glass to maximize natural light inside. “It’s going to be amazing,” said Lynn Fisher, M.D., associate professor in the KU Wichita Department of Family & Community Medicine, who drives by it several times a week on his way to the Downtown YMCA.

Faculty are even more excited about what will take place inside. In addition to the medical school, the campus will be home to KU School of Pharmacy-Wichita, Wichita State University’s College of Health Professions and Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic, and WSU Tech’s health care program, bringing some 3,000 students and 200 faculty downtown. The majority of WSU and WSU Tech student teaching will occur on floors one through four. KU will use floors six through eight and the fifth floor will be shared for high-tech simulation centers and anatomy labs.

The opportunities for collaboration among students, faculty and researchers at those institutions was the first thing mentioned by three faculty members interviewed for this article.

“I’m very excited for all of us to have the opportunity to be in one building, across different areas of health professions, and to be more innovative in our approach to education,” said Colleen Loo-Gross, M.D., associate dean for student affairs. “I think it really helps drive home the importance of the team-based approach to medical care and how we can positively impact our community."

Fisher said having future physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physician assistants and physical therapists interacting in and out of classrooms and labs can’t help but improve the delivery of care.

“Sometimes when we learn in our individual silos, we don’t put enough emphasis on the team approach — understanding each skill set, what they have and can do for patient care. I think that (the new campus) is going to give us more opportunity to have students working together as a team, because when you get out into the real world, that’s what happens.”

Simply being located in the same building will help the medical school and its fellow tenants coordinate joint events, and the building offers space for them. A three-story pavilion fronting William Street will hold three 80-person classrooms that can be converted into an event venue.

Pate noted that KU Wichita has a long history of community collaboration. While a majority of medical schools are tied to one hospital, KU Wichita boasts more than 1,000 volunteer faculty practicing at three partner hospitals (Ascension Via Christi, Wesley Medical Center and the Dole VA Medical Center) along with doctors’ offices across Kansas.

“I think moving to this campus and the way we’re moving (with other educational institutions) is going to be a strong affirmation of that, but also open even more opportunities for deeper collaborations,” he said. “The impact of that for medical students is opening up major opportunities for intraprofessional education.”

Pate said the new campus should also contribute to another opportunity for collaboration, between the city’s medical and engineering fields.

“Why wouldn’t we think about being leaders in biomedical engineering, which is one of the most promising future aspects of health care?”

Another significant change will be the growth in size of the student body. Currently, the school typically has 28 students in each of its first- and second-year classes. Due to the transfer of students who spend their first two years on the KUSM Kansas City campus, there are about 70 in each of Wichita's third- and fourth-year classes. With the opening of the Wichita Biomedical Campus, KU Wichita will have the capacity to expand its first- and second-year classes to about 70 students each.

That will be felt in the community, Loo-Gross predicted.

“We have a very involved medical student population that gets out into the community to help improve medical outcomes,” she said. “I can see so much more connection and partnership happening by including additional students.”

As an example, Fisher noted that students in the school’s Family Medicine Interest Group are “really active” doing things like making antitobacco and vaping presentations at elementary schools and staffing booths at community health fairs.

“Having more students will be really helpful,” he said. “I think every (student) group will benefit from the fact there will be more students on campus. I think we can amplify those opportunities, the work that our student body does.”

And more medical students eventually equals more physicians.

“The more students we expose to our community and our campus, the more people and physicians we maintain, not just for Wichita but also for the surrounding areas and across Kansas,” Loo-Gross said.

Interest in the various medical specialties available for students to pursue will likely increase as well. For instance, KU Wichita has a national reputation for producing family medicine physicians, a critical need for underserved rural areas of the state. But Fisher said a “shiny new building” may help convince others “you can come to the Wichita campus and become any kind of doctor you want to be.”

Loo-Gross said the standardized patient center on the sixth floor, with 24 individual exam rooms, two rooms for Point-of-Care Ultrasound training and more, is one feature of the new building potential students will find impressive. Standardized patients are people who have been coached and trained to simulate an actual patient, helping students enhance their interpersonal and communication skills as well as how to examine patients and diagnose medical issues in a safe environment.

“We do a fantastic job of training our students and they’re really well prepared to go out and provide high-quality care,” Loo-Gross said. “And this setting, in a brand new, state-of-the-art facility, enhances that even more.”

Then there are the campus amenities on the top two floors, including a student center, outdoor terrace, kitchenette, lounge and library, in addition to classrooms and workspaces. The campus sits in a bustling area of downtown flanked by hotels, apartments, restaurants, entertainment venues and other businesses.

“Hopefully the charm of having restaurants and venues close enough that if the weather is nice, you might be able to take a little walk, I think that will be a nice amenity,” Fisher said. “If there happens to be an event going on downtown and you’ve been at the school all day, it will be very convenient to get to Intrust Bank Arena or Century II.”

In terms of comparison with the school’s current campus — a former county hospital for the poor that sits next to I-135 — there really is none. School leadership says that building has served its purpose well and will continue to be used, but there’s no doubt faculty are looking forward to what Pate calls the “energy and potential” of the new campus.

“From the student perspective, I believe we deliver a high-level medical education,” he said, “but anything we can do to continue to attract the best and brightest students from all over Kansas and beyond to come and train in Wichita for four years — I think that’s something to be really excited about.”

Learn more

A new home for the health sciences is rising in the heart of downtown Wichita. Learn more about the Wichita Biomedical Campus and the innovative partnership to serve Kansas and prepare the next generation of physicians and pharmacists.