UNMC launches Chinese med school program

Kangmu Ma goes to school each day at nine in the morning.

And each evening around seven he gets to go home.

Such is the life of a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, he said.

Ma, who uses the American name “Ben” – he pulled the name out of a hat during English class when he was 8 years old, and it’s stuck ever since – is the only Chinese student earning his doctoral degree from UNMC through a partnership with his home university in China.

So far, it hasn’t been easy.

“Life is hard here,” he said, laughing. “I’m a brand-new student in a brand-new program.”

UNMC’s joint-degree program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, formally titled the UNMC-SJTUSM Physician Scientist Training Program, has been under development for the past four years and is the only such venture in the nation.

After Jiao Tong students complete two years of medical school in China, they can apply to spend four years at UNMC to earn their doctoral degrees.

Two final years of medical school then await them when they make the trans-oceanic trip home.

Ma has been researching preventative cancer methods since his late-September arrival in Nebraska.

Next semester, he will enroll in UNMC courses.

“I need to hurry up,” Ma said, referring to the time crunch to complete a traditionally five-year degree in a shortened four year span.

The doctoral program is an outgrowth of a pre-existing partnership with Jiao Tong, said Ward Chambers, UNMC’s coordinator of international programs and associate professor of internal medicine.

Nine students from Jiao Tong will be at UNMC until January, Chambers said.

The medical center is also on an elite list of about 20 American universities that the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which UNMC considers to be “the Chinese equivalent of the National Institutes of Health,” collaborates with for research.

In September 2007, the China-U.S. Joint Research Center for Life Science was created to house research projects between UNMC and the Chinese academy.

In addition, the medical center is in a partnership with Xi’an Jiaotong University Health Science Center in northwestern China and is on the Chinese Scholarship Council’s list of preferred U.S. institutions for student exchanges.

“We have to compete now on a global basis for faculty and students,” Chambers said, adding that UNMC is working toward crafting a worldwide “research enterprise.”

As for the budding doctoral program with Jiao Tong, Chambers said it’s still in its infant stages, and UNMC is “working out the kinks” with Ma as the guinea pig.

“We’re taking it one step at a time,” Chambers said. 

Ma doesn’t seem to mind being the first, though.

“I would like to thank all the people for giving me this opportunity,” he said. “They are happy to see my progress day by day.”

UNMC can rest assured he’ll be up before nine tomorrow morning, working to cure cancer long after the sky has gone dark.

teresalostroh@dailynebraskan.com