The Duluth campus will switch from a two-year to a four-year program next fall, with a continued emphasis on solving the rural doctor shortage.
MINNEAPOLIS — The University of Minnesota Medical School’s Duluth campus will transition next fall from a two-year program into a full four-year program, in an effort to retain more doctors in rural and Indigenous communities across the state.
Currently, the Duluth campus enrolls 65 medical students, who train at Duluth for their first two years and then transfer to the Twin Cities campus for their last two years of clinical training. The class of students entering in the fall of 2025, however, will be the first to stay in Duluth all four years.
“They’ll be Duluth students from start to finish,” said Kevin Diebel, the regional dean of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Duluth campus. “What that will allow us to do, is to further …