USD Sanford School of Medicine Sioux Falls Transition

Consolidating the first 18 months of USD’s M.D. program and the Division of Biomedical and Translational Sciences in Sioux Falls is an important step in continuing to improve quality health care in South Dakota. This change will allow the USD Sanford School of Medicine to:

• Enhance students’ pre-clinical education by giving them more opportunities to work with and learn from clinical faculty. Clinical integration with biomedical science content can lead to better knowledge retention.
• Connect students with more hands-on learning opportunities, enhancing their preparedness for competitive residencies.
• Promote translational and applied research by expanding the collaborative research opportunities available to faculty and facilitating more interaction with patients.
• Better position the SSOM to recruit and retain expert faculty, including those already located in Sioux Falls and employed by South Dakota’s major health care systems.

In 2024 the USD Sanford School of Medicine celebrated 50 years of offering the four-year M.D. degree. This marked a long-standing legacy of building the state's health care workforce and promoting the health and well-being of South Dakotans.

In those 50 years, medical education has evolved, as have the needs of South Dakota's health care systems; from an increased demand for physicians with specialized training to the need for students to have enhanced pre-clinical experience to maximize their competitiveness for residencies, USD has assessed the needs of our medical school and our state. With those priorities identified and resources available in Sioux Falls, we have an opportunity to shape the next 50 years of medical education and further support the state's health care systems through this consolidation.

The initial focus will include the relocation of the first 18 months of the M.D. program, the Division of Biomedical & Translational Sciences (research labs), Medical Student Affairs and other pre-clinical academic and support areas to temporary locations in Sioux Falls. The first phase of this transition is now beginning. Groups will move from Vermillion to Sioux Falls in different stages to ensure a smooth transition, with the intention of these areas being fully in Sioux Falls by the summer of 2027. A new building is estimated to be built approximately seven to ten years from now.

Students who start their M.D. program in fall of 2026 will complete the first year of Pillar 1 in Vermillion and will transition to Sioux Falls for the last few months of Pillar 1. Students who start their M.D. program in fall of 2027 will begin their education in Sioux Falls.

The new state-of-the-art facility will serve the medical school’s existing needs of housing the first 18 months of the M.D. program and the Division of Biomedical & Translational Sciences, which currently occupy approximately 100,000 square feet of the Andrew E. Lee Memorial Medicine & Science Building Vermillion. The site will also expand opportunities for medical education and research.

The new site in Sioux Falls will include:

• Classrooms, lecture halls and active classrooms, which are designed to better facilitate movement and group work
• Laboratory spaces for faculty and student research
• Expanded resources for research, including core facilities
• Expanded space for new programs that are in high demand and will support the needs of South Dakotans (such as neurology and cardiology)
• Student support services, such as study aids, additional career counseling resources and mental health services

A new, permanent site will be built in seven to ten years in central Sioux Falls, allowing for proximity to Avera Health, Sanford Health and the VA. This proximity to hospitals is essential for research and clinical skills alike, ensuring our future physicians have a strong foundation rooted in real-world experience and patient care.

The university plans to pursue traditional funding sources for this capital project, including public and private support, grant opportunities and the reallocation of internal resources currently supporting the medical school operations in our current locations in Vermillion and Sioux Falls.

Gifts of any size help USD offer the best possible medical education to our students and serve communities across the state. Your support is an investment in our students and faculty as we shape this next chapter of medicine in South Dakota. Support put toward operational costs will help make this state-of-the-art facility possible. There are additional opportunities to support endowed chairs and lectureships, recruitment and onboarding efforts for researchers, and student scholarships.

You can visit our secure giving website to make a donation.

The building that currently houses medical education in Vermillion — the Andrew E. Lee Memorial Medicine & Science Building — will be renovated to house several programs in the sciences. This offers a cost-effective solution to rebuilding the Akeley-Lawrence Building, which has experienced significant foundation and structural issues beyond the reasonable cost of repair; this solution, when compared to alternative plans of rebuilding, is expected to offer a cost savings of $15 million. 

This change will not only address the existing needs met by the Akeley-Lawrence Building but will also bring together programs that are currently spread out across campus to spur greater collaboration in research and teaching. The centerpiece of this effort will be an Interdisciplinary Data Sciences Laboratory: a multipurpose, collaborative space designed for teaching and research across disciplines, promoting better understanding of and ability to harness the transformational power of data. 

Since 1907, the Sanford School of Medicine has served South Dakota as its only school of medicine, playing an important role in building the state's health care workforce, providing quality care and upholding strong partnerships across the state. With an award-winning curriculum, our school prepares medical students to practice in all fields of medicine and is recognized for our reputation in family medicine and rural medicine. In addition to the M.D., the Sanford School of Medicine offers graduate degrees in biomedical and translational sciences, sustains a vibrant and forward-looking research agenda and is home to the interdisciplinary Center for Brain and Behavioral Research. Learn more about the medical school.

The curriculum in USD's M.D. program is organized into three pillars that span four years. The pillars begin by providing students with a foundational knowledge base and progress through a number of hands-on experiences in various settings; the program prepares students to build competency in patient care, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, and systems-based practice. You can read about each pillar on the Office of Medical Education webpage.

After their four years of medical school at USD, students go on to pursue residencies and fellowships to complete their medical education and become practicing physicians.

The Division of Biomedical & Translational Sciences, which is housed in the USD Sanford School of Medicine, creates an environment of innovative and interdisciplinary research aimed at examining human disease. Biomedical scientists ask questions and find solutions to examine human disease and advance medicine. Through biomedical research, experts can expand our understanding of health and improve the human condition. USD offers an M.S. and a Ph.D. in biomedical and translational sciences.