Category: Medical school

The student view of the Medical School has changed as the years progressed. Only three years after the opening of the Medical School, the 1892 Gopher Yearbook (page 77) proclaimed the Medical School's positives, including the high standard it set for its students. Some other aspects of the Medical School that the Gopher Yearbook touted were the great clinical facilities, the large number of students, and the faculty who had previous experience in teaching or managing medical schools.

Toward the end of the production of Gopher Yearbooks, the observations about the Medical School were less glowing. The comments were still positive, however they were aimed more toward commiserating with the current students on how much work it was to study for a medical degree. In the 1961 Gopher Yearbook (pages 123-125), for instance, an article entitled "Medical School Means Study" explained that "Medical school has a reputation for being rough. This is no idle talk. Every hour of lecture means at least two in the lab." In 1964, the Gopher Yearbook (pages 339-343) had an article about how the work of a medical student was demanding and required determination. While this article has many pictures and explanations about what a medical student does during their years of training, it has nothing as complimentary as what was written in the 1892 Gopher Yearbook.

Millard Hall, corner of Washington and Union.

Millard Hall, constructed in 1911 and opened in 1912, served as a complimentary facility to the recently opened Anatomy Hall, now Jackson Hall. Millard Hall provided laboratory research space and departmental headquarters for most faculty in the Medical School. Millard Hall was torn down in 1999, along with Owre Hall and Lyon Laboratories, to make way for the Molecular and Cellular Biology building.

But did you know there was a Millard Hall before this Millard Hall? Did you know the original Millard Hall is still standing on campus, albeit under a different name?

The first Millard Hall opened in October of 1892 as Medical Hall on the corner of Arlington and Pleasant. This was the first new building on campus dedicated to the medical sciences. Dean Perry Millard provided nearly $65,000 of the construction costs and the legislature appropriated $80,000. After Dean Millard's death the building was named in his honor in 1906. When the new Medical School opened in 1912 the name was transferred to the new location.

The original Millard Hall.

What became of the old Millard Hall? In 1913 the College of Pharmacy, under the leadership of Dean Frederick Wulling, moved into the space. In 1942 the building was renamed in his honor and retains that designation today.

Today the building no longer serves as an educational home to any of the health sciences on campus, but it remains the first building constructed for medical education and has outlasted many that have come after it, including the new Millard Hall.

B.J. Kennedy was a Regents' Professor at the University of Minnesota and was considered the Father of Medical Oncology by many. Kennedy passed away in 2003, and his family deposited materials from his research and work in 2004 and 2010. Just recently, those materials have been processed and listed so as to be more accessible to the general public.

Within those materials are a huge number of images from Dr. Kennedy's research into cancer and graphics from talks he gave. Kennedy also kept an ordered collection of the almost-1,000 articles he published, which is now stored in the University Archives. While a prolific researcher, he was also a prominent administrator at the University of Minnesota. His papers include records from the Department of Oncology and the Masonic Cancer Center.

Learn why Dr. B.J. Kennedy was considered the Father of Medical Oncology by visiting the University Archives and reading his biographical file or looking through the collection of his materials.