DEAN’ S MESSAGE
A s we continue to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our College of Medicine, we welcome this new academic year with great excitement. We have many plans, some of which are shared in this issue of our magazine.
First and foremost, we remain focused on providing an outstanding education program for our future physicians, physician assistants and scientists. To do so, we continually reinvigorate and, at times, reinvent what we do to meet the fast-paced environment of our profession and the health care needs of Florida’ s growing population.
To best serve our students, community faculty and researchers, the college – in partnership with FSU Health – is expanding research opportunities for our students. We’ re doing this by building the research infrastructure to support community faculty interested in working with our students on research projects.
Our clerkship faculty are busy clinicians. Many would love to participate in, or have their practices be a part of, research projects, but time and resources are a barrier. We aim to change that. Through the Office of the Vice President for Research, centralized support services are offered for all types of clinical research. Navigators will be hired to help clinical researchers shepherd projects from conception to publication. A newly designed website serves as a one-stop shop to link clinical researchers with a variety of services to tackle issues such as proposal development, grants and contracts, biostatistics and informatics, and participant recruitment. You can read more about our initiative in this magazine.
In August, we welcomed the first-year medical students who arrived in May officially to the profession during the annual White Coat Ceremony, and we will welcome our newest members to the Hall of Fame during the annual College of Medicine Alumni Weekend, Nov. 7-9. We have a big class of inductees this year, and you can learn more about them beginning on page 50.
Looking ahead to our next 25 years and beyond, we see significant growth on the horizon— both programmatic and physical. We have plans to expand Graduate Medical Education to meet the workforce demands of Florida’ s growing population. By 2030— which is not that far away— we plan to grow from our existing 27 GME programs to 50 and from 395 physician residents and fellows to nearly 1,000 across the state.
FSU Health, with the college as a major player, will expand health care services and research opportunities across Florida. The FSU Health Academic Health Center on the campus of Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare is on track to open in the summer of 2026, and ground has been broken on our new hospital in Panama City Beach— a first for Florida State. These initiatives, and many yet to come, are truly transformational.
I hope you share the pride I have in our College of Medicine and are equally excited about what the future holds.
With Warm Regards,
Alma B. Littles, M. D. Dean, FSU College of Medicine
FALL 2025 3