Brown breaking ground on medical school

PROVIDENCE – Brown University plans to break ground Monday on its new medical school building, capping a years-long planning process and giving a visible boost to efforts to turn the Jewelry District into a hub of biomedical research and entrepreneurship.
Brown President Ruth J. Simmons and Dr. Edward J. Wing, dean of medicine and biological sciences, are to be joined by several state officials for the noon groundbreaking ceremony, including Gov. Donald L. Carcieri and Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline.
The building, at 222 Richmond St., will be the Warren Alpert Medical School’s first real home. It will be about 135,000 square feet, with lecture halls, an anatomy lab, case study and seminar rooms, and a central atrium with entrances on both Richmond and Eddy Streets.
Rather than erect a new building from scratch, Brown is revamping a former jewelry factory that had most recently been used as an office building. Ellenzweig Associates did the design.
The new building is expected to change how students are taught, enabling a shift to an “academy system,” Brown said. Under that system, students will be organized in smaller subgroups for class teaching and mentoring.
Two other frequently cited advantages will be that the building will provide state-of-the-art facilities, and even more important, that it will bring the medical school within a stone’s throw of Lifespan and Care New England research labs, as well as biomedical businesses.