A Historic Investment: New College of Medicine Interdisciplinary Building a Game Changer for Tennessee

2026 College of Medicine Class President Evan Finder took the long view when he heard that the Tennessee General Assembly had appropriated $311 million for the construction of the new $350 million College of Medicine Interdisciplinary Building.

“The new College of Medicine building represents a historic moment not only for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, but for the great state of Tennessee at large,” Finder said. “Within its halls, the next generation of physicians will have ample space and resources to dedicate years of their lives into the study of the human body and mind. When you and I are in our most challenging moments, we will be able to rest easy, knowing that our doctors trained here.”

His words reveal the essence of the building. More than bricks and mortar, the building will serve as a hub for training future health care professionals to practice collaborative, state-of-the-art care across Tennessee.

The 300,000-square-foot building will be located on the Memphis campus on Madison Avenue, between the College of Pharmacy Building at 881 Madison Ave. and the recently demolished Holiday Inn building at the corner of Madison Avenue and Pauline Street.

“This is a transformative step for UT Health Sciences, as well as for health and health care of the people of Tennessee,” Chancellor Peter Buckley, MD, said in mid-April when word came from Nashville that the funding for the building had been approved. “We are grateful to Gov. Bill Lee and the General Assembly for their extraordinary support of our university and our statewide vision of Healthy Tennesseans. Thriving Communities.”

The new building will allow room to expand the medicine class from 175 to 250 per cohort and the Physician Assistant Program from 30 to 60 students per year.

Because UT Health Sciences has a statewide footprint, this stands to have a measurable impact on health and health care across Tennessee, which currently ranks near the bottom in overall health outcomes.

“This is an investment in continuing to meet the significant deficit in physicians and physician assistants in the state of Tennessee, with projections suggesting that there will be a need for 6,000 additional physicians in the state by 2030,” said Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer Raaj Kurapati, who is leading the project.

Clockwise from top left, renderings of the College of Medicine Interdisciplinary Building’s roof terrace, interdisciplinary lounge, entry plaza and cloister.

Additionally, demand is expected to grow for interdisciplinary roles, such as nurse anesthetists by 40% and physician assistants by 28%.

New technology will facilitate interdisciplinary training aimed at producing health care providers who are equipped to work together to meet the demands of health care today.

The building will support telehealth training in multiple fields and increase the use of online educational opportunities for the College of Medicine and other colleges, allowing for eventual increases in the number of academic certificate programs and enrollment in those programs.

The building is also expected to enhance the university’s already growing response to the rural health care challenges in Tennessee.

“The University of Tennessee Health Science Center will play a critical role in training the next generation of health care providers for all Tennesseans, and I’m grateful to make this strategic investment in partnership with the General Assembly,” Gov. Lee said. “A new College of Medicine Interdisciplinary Building will increase the number of physicians and healthcare providers, allowing us to build on our work to improve access to health care statewide, and particularly in rural areas.”

As Tennessee’s only statewide, academic health science center, UT Health Sciences trains the healthcare workforce for Tennessee with campuses at major hospitals in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. It is expected the new building will enable the university to graduate an additional 1,450 health care professionals practicing in various fields over its first five years of operation.

While the state has made the lead investment in the building of $311 million, the university must raise an additional $50 million in philanthropic support to bring the project to completion, including $39 million toward the costs of the building and additional funds for specialized equipment and programmatic support.

A strategic space inventory of the campus was done prior to the initial programming for the building to determine how it could support future needs.

HOK, a global design, architecture, engineering, and planning firm, conducted the inventory and designed the programming for the proposed building.

In 2025, the state approved the university’s spending up to $10 million to allow for planning and design of the building, which helped keep the project moving and allowed the institution to save about 15 months on the project timeline.

The university has selected brg3s architects, a Memphis-based firm with a long history in healthcare, to design the building and work in collaboration with HOK.

Once all approvals are received from the state, the aim is to begin construction in late fall 2026. Substantial completion is anticipated in 2029.

“I think this is one of those landmark events at a college of medicine,” said UT Health Sciences’ College of Medicine Executive Dean Michael Hocker, MD.

This story was initially featured in the summer 2026 issue of Health Sciences magazine.