Temple University School of Medicine gained high marks in the most recent U.S News & World Report rankings of the best medical schools in the state and country. No stranger to the list, in past years TUSM has received similar high rankings.
For 2014, the school is placed at No. 51 nationally in research. This is the second-highest ranking out of all the medical schools in Philadelphia. The University of Pennsylvania is No. 1 in the city.
The rankings track a series of categories including student admissions, research activity and reputation among medical school colleagues and residency directors.
“They call [the schools] research schools but they are not ranked only because of their research,” said Dr. Richard Kozera, executive associate dean at TUSM.
Kozera said that he believes in many areas TUSM is a leader, including the skill of its professional researchers.
“We have one of the best, if not the best, pulmonary centers in the whole Northeast,” he said, adding, “the researchers that we have are world class.”
A large project out of TUSM is the Center for Translation Medicine. This research is dedicated to improve the treatment and outcomes for patients, by increasing the mobility of basic scientific discoveries.
Recent discoveries out of the program include a possible link between the human papillomavirus 16 to a form of childhood epilepsy, and a key biochemical step involving heart failure that could aid the invention of new drugs to treat and possibly someday prevent the problem.
Kozera said in order to complete the projects, employees from different departments must collaborate.
“They are very excited to be working together into multi-disciplinary ways,” he said.
Funding for the projects out of TUSM is provided through grants from the National Institutes of Health that were awarded in 2012. The total amount was $94 million, which was split to about $183,400 per faculty member.
TUSM is among the Top 10 most applied-to medical schools in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Faculty members at TUSM educate upward of 840 medical students and 140 graduate students per semester, according to a press release from the school.
Kozera said that while it is nice to be recognized, employees of the school don’t pay the rankings too much mind.
“We do it because we want to have a good medical school,” he said. “Although it is nice to give ourselves a pat on the back.
Cindy Stansbury can be reached at cindy.stansbury@temple.edu.
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