Schools

Hofstra’s medical school to double in size

University, state officials break ground on $39.5M addition

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The Jets’ old, dark-green scoreboard still stands in a dirt field at the team’s former training camp on Hofstra University’s north campus. “The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare,” it reads.

Call it a monument to the past, which will soon be removed to make way for the future –– a 63,000-square-foot addition to the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ Medical School, which was founded in 2008 and welcomed its first class of 40 in 2011. The $39.5 million project, funded in part with a $14.5 million state grant, will more than double the size of the medical school.

The new building will connect to the school’s current 50,000-square building, a redbrick structure that was the Jets’ training facility. It was gutted to make way for Hofstra’s modern, high-tech medical school –– the first such school built in New York in 35 years.

Hofstra officials and state and local lawmakers broke ground on the medical school’s addition during a June 6 ceremony.

“Three years ago, we stood together in this building to celebrate the beginning of a new era –– the opening of the Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine,” said Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz. “Now we celebrate how far we’ve come together towards our goal of training a new generation of doctors who will improve health care on Long Island and in New York state for decades to come.”

“It’s a tremendous feeling to stand here today and proclaim that we need more room to fully carry out our mission,” said Dr. Lawrence Smith, the medical school’s founding dean.

Michael Dowling, president and CEO of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, said the medical school’s primary objective is to teach students how “to treat patients, not just their diseases.”

“This is an absolutely wonderful occasion,” Dowling said. “If you dream it, you can make it happen. What is important is what happens inside [the medical school]. This has to be the center for innovation.”

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