FACILITIES & CAMPUS LIFE

Exchanging Gifts

UVM's medical campus has seen some dramatic changes in the past few years with the completion of a new Medical Education Center in 2005. Built adjoining the north end of the Given medical building with a concourse connecting the Center to the Fletcher Allen Ambulatory Care Center, the new facility provides students and faculty state-of-the-art medical classrooms and technology that support the College of Medicine's groundbreaking Vermont Integrated Curriculum.

Classrooms in the Medical Education Center take advantage of the latest in educational technology, including videoconferencing capabilities that can put students and faculty in a virtual remote location, whether it's in a lab across the campus or an operating room across the country.

One of those classrooms is named for a generous doctor whose bond with the College of Medicine goes back more than four decades, and who still plays a central role in the life of the College of Medicine.

Mimi Reardon, MD'67, came to the College of Medicine as a first-year student in 1963, one of just five women in a class of 50 medical students. During a 27 year career as a primary care physician in the Burlington area, she stayed close to the College of Medicine, teaching classes and giving of her time as a volunteer in various capacities. Always an advocate for patients and a voice to be heeded on Vermont and national health care issues, she agreed to accept the position of associate dean for primary care in the College of Medicine when it was created in 1993 and began what would become an extraordinary second career devoted to improving access to primary care across Vermont, especially its underserved areas.

During her time as associate dean, Dr. Reardon spearheaded the effort to establish Vermont's three regional Area Health Education Centers, securing the funding and getting them operational, with the goal of improving health care for all Vermonters. She championed the creation of Vermont's MedQuest program, which provides hands-on health care career programs for high school students and helps to build Vermont's health care workforce. And she was a key figure in establishing UVM's relationship with the Freeman Foundation, whose generous funding of the Freeman Medical Scholars Program and Freeman Nurse Scholars Program has provided millions of dollars annually to strengthen Vermont's health care infrastructure.

Dr. Reardon retired from the associate deanship in 2006, but she still struggles to keep her "retirement" down to a half-time commitment to UVM. She remains director of the Freeman Medical Scholars Program and the Pre-Medical Enhancement Program for high-achieving undergraduates interested in medical careers and is co-director of the Integrative Medicine Program that works to integrate complementary and alternative medicine with conventional and allopathic medicine.

Her gift to sponsor the Mimi Reardon Classroom at the College of Medicine, she says, "came from my desire to express my appreciation to the UVM College of Medicine for the gift that I received in the form of my education and my profession. I believe in the mission deeply, and I wanted to do what I could to support that mission in a way that also supports students in their pursuit of medical knowledge."