Student Life at UMMS-Baystate
You will spend time at the UMMS-Baystate campus in Springfield from your very first week—becoming familiar with our faculty, teaching facilities, patients, and communities where you'll do your clinical training in your third and fourth years.
Your home base is Brightwood House—the learning community for PURCH students. You will learn and work together with these students and faculty mentors over the four years of medical school.
Get an idea of a typical day for a first-year and second-year PURCH student at the Baystate campus.
The First Day
Breakfast with Faculty and Staff
Welcome from Dean Andy Artenstein
Team Building Ice Breaker
The First Month
August 10: First DCS Class
PURCH students compared and contrasted clinical reasoning with everyday reasoning by listening to a master auto mechanic diagnose car problems.
August 31: History-taking Interviews
Half of the class practiced their interview skills by taking family and social histories with clients at the Friends of the Homeless shelter.
The other half interviewed inmates at the Ludlow jail. They also discussed the healthcare systems at the shelter or jail and identified barriers to care.
September 9: Interprofessional Poverty Simulation
PURCH students joined students from 7 nursing schools and 2 pharmacy schools in an exercise simulating the experiences of living in poverty. Executives, attendings and residents have participated in similar poverty simulations.
September 15: Class of 2021 White Coat Ceremony
Our 20 PURCH students and their 142 classmates—UMass Medical School's largest class in its history—received their white coats at a ceremony at the main campus.