Office of Public Relations – Newsroom
News Release
CU Mini Med School 2004 to Begin Today
DENVER ( Sept. 22, 2004 ) - It's time for University of Colorado Denver's Mini Med School again. This nationally acclaimed program, now in its 16 th year, is a nine-week lecture series that provides a layman's overview of topics covered during the first two years of medical school. Though graduates aren't certified for anything at the end of the course, students say that the knowledge gained helps them to interact more fully with their doctors and the medical media.
In 1989, a joint effort between the CU-Health Sciences Center 's Office of Public Relations and Dr. J. John Cohen, launched the CU Mini Med School. The first program of its kind, it has since been a model for similar programs across the nation and around the world.
"Many people take the course to get an appreciation of the human body, and the relationship between research and patient care," Cohen said. "Since we live in our bodies, it is exciting to get some feeling for how they work."
Across the state, audience spaces are filled each year to capacity with medical school hopefuls, homemakers, lawyers, teachers, and artists. School of Medicine professors present lectures that, in the words of one former student, are better described as "mind candy!" Cohen explains that the professors all "have a track record for talking to the public and the lectures are entertaining as well as informative. When you're talking to hundreds of people, it's as much an act of theater as education."
The lectures are based at the CU School of Medicine in Denver, and rural audiences are linked in through live feed, actively participating in the Q&A sessions. This is the first year that Boulder is offering the Mini Med program through satellite. Although this fall's series is full, check the Web site - www.uchsc.edu/community/minimed - for information about future Mini Med programs. The class runs Sept. 22 through Nov. 17.
The University of Colorado Denver is one of three campuses in the University of Colorado system. Located in Denver and Aurora, Colo., the center includes schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and dentistry, a graduate school and a teaching hospital. For more information, visit the Web site at www.uchsc.edu.