Pullman-based Washington State University welcomed its first class of medical students Aug. 16, officially ending a nearly 100-year-old legal statue barring the university from creating a medical school, The Spokesman-Review reports.
State legislators passed a law in 1917 giving Seattle-based University of Washington sole authority to create and operate a medical school in the state. UW also received funding to create programs for architecture, law, journalism and aeronautical engineering, while WSU received state funds to establish programs in veterinary medicine and agricultural.
State officials began campaigning for the expansion of medical education across the state during the 1990s, but WSU was not awarded legal authority to create a medical school until March 2015. The university did, however, break ground on a nursing school — the WSU College of Nursing — at its Spokane, Wash., campus in 2006.