Welcome to the Web site of the School of Medicine at Mercer University!
Meet the Dean

After serving fifteen years as Chairman of the Mercer University School of Medicine Department of Surgery and Program Director of the Surgery Residency at the Medical Center of Central Georgia, I was pleased and honored when President Kirby Godsey asked me to assume the Deanship in September 2005. I view this appointment as the capstone of my professional career and I intend to make the most of the opportunity.

After fifteen months at the helm of the Mercer University School of Medicine, I believe we have made some headway in stabilizing the administration and its relation to the students. I have set several goals for my tenure including a marked effort to enhance collaborative research between the clinical and basic science faculties. We are actively pursuing bench to bedside “Translational Research.” Toward that end, we have established a bi-monthly research symposium for sharing ideas and hopefully benefiting patients by new methods of approach to old diseases. I am also working toward increased relations with our colleagues at Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah.

After intense preparation, we welcomed the LCME focused visit committee to our campus October 8-11, 2006. This proved to be a very successful visit with all nine curriculum citations erased after the visit. We are justifiably pleased with our full accreditation status. Our next LCME visit will occur in 2012.

We have sent third and fourth year students to Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah since 1996 for their clinical rotations. This has led the administration of Memorial Health University Medical Center to request that we work with them to establish a four year medical school on their campus. This would be an identical arrangement to what we have in Macon and would be a branch of Mercer University School Medicine in Savannah under the jurisdiction of a single dean with senior associate deans for each campus. Tentative plans call for beginning this new branch of our medical school in Savannah in August 2008 with thirty entering students. Much of this depends on state financing at the present time.

Following successful remodeling and refitting of all the learning devices, including Smart Boards in the tutorial rooms on the second floor of the medical school building, we are planning to renovate the current area occupied by Mercer Health Systems for a new modern clinical skills department. This project is expected to begin in mid 2007.

Thanks to the pressing need and with the full cooperation of the administration at Mercer University, we are currently adding two basic science faculty members. These positions have been filled and two additional basic science appointments have been made. These new faculty members will join us in early 2007. We continue to work diligently to maintain the highest level of instruction for our students. For this reason, and many others, there is a new wave of enthusiasm amongst students and faculty.

Martin L. Dalton Jr., M.D., FACS, dean of the School of Medicine