The University of New Mexico hopes to continue its North Campus expansion with the construction of a new $600 million School of Medicine
Senate Bill 6, which would provide the necessary funds to the University, was most recently given a “Do Pass” recommendation by the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee at the time of publication.
State Sen. Elizabeth Stefanics (D-39), one of the sponsors of SB 6, said the new facility will help address many aspects of the state’s healthcare provider shortage.
“It is our hope that when we recruit people to UNM that they will want to stay in the state after, so all of these areas, all of these disciplines can be used everywhere in the whole state,” Stefanics said.
New Mexico is ranked 32nd in the nation in total physician supply, and over a million people in the state live in health professional shortage areas, according to the Cicero Institute.
“We’re trying to bring in a whole new crop of people and expand the number of people who can take classes with this huge new facility. Because the facility doesn’t just do the teaching in the classrooms, they also have all these different clinics,” Stefanics said.
The project is expected to be funded mostly by $546.6 million through state legislature appropriations, and the rest through philanthropic contributions.
During 2025, the State Legislature appropriated $30 million for the planning and design process of the School, which has already been according to the UNM Health Sciences Center.
UNM plans to double the size of the School of Medicine classes in the next decade, according to UNM HS. The recent opening of the UNM Hospital Critical Care Tower also provided more space for clinical training of students, residents and fellows.
Executive Vice President of UNM Health Sciences and CEO of UNM Health, Michael Richards, said UNM HSC is excited to be on a “pathway of growing access to care.”
“The needs of a medical school in the late 1960s are very different than the needs of a medical school today, from the way that we deliver the education in a much more interprofessional and interactive way to the kind of science and lab support that a current medical school needs,” Richards said.
The current School of Medicine is located in Reginald Heber Fitz Hall, which opened in 1967. The proposed site for the new school is at the northeast corner of Lomas and University Boulevards and would cover 330,000 square feet.
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“Healthcare professionals require clinical experience to be able to complete their training, and over the last decade or so, we’ve saturated our clinical delivery system with learners. That has been one of our rate-limiting steps in terms of being able to grow the programs. So now that we’re growing the clinical delivery system, and we’re going to be seeing more patients, we now have the opportunity to then say, ‘now we can start to grow the education programs,’” Richards said.
The new School of Medicine is expected to finish construction in the spring of 2030 and begin hosting classes in the fall of that year, according to UNM HSC. The project would be one of the largest public construction projects in New Mexico’s history and yield an estimated $1.5 billion in economic impact.
“I’m most excited about the idea that we’re going to be able to train more health care professionals, and so giving that opportunity for New Mexican students to pursue a health professional career. But it’s also really exciting to be part of the team that helps build a facility that will likely be here for the next seven or 10 generations,” Richards said.
Jaden McKelvey-Francis is the editor-in-chief of the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at editorinchief@dailylobo.com or on X @jadenmckelvey
