Hackensack Meridian School of
Medicine at Seton Hall University

A Collaborative Effort

The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University is a collaborative effort between New Jersey’s premier academic medical institution, the Hackensack University Medical Center, and the country’s oldest and most renowned faith-based university, Seton Hall University. It will be the state’s only private school of medicine.

Fifty-Five Physicians

We anticipate welcoming the first class of 55 future physicians in July 2018 and aim to attain an ultimate class size of 125-150 students per year, bringing the total enrollment to more than 500 students. Seton Hall’s plan to co-locate its College of Nursing and School of Health and Medical Sciences (approximately 1,500 students in nursing, physical / occupational / speech therapy, physician assistants, and advanced degrees in health administration and health sciences research) with the school of medicine mirrors the integrated, innovative approach that will inform healthcare delivery in the future.

Primary Clinical Teaching Sites

Hackensack Meridian Health’s hospitals will serve as the primary clinical teaching sites for multiple healthcare graduate education programs. (Hackensack University Medical Center currently trains approximately 225 medical students every year, 140 medical and dental residents per month, and 75 to 100 nursing students annually.) Students will also gain from our academic partnerships with Rutgers, St. George’s University, Diabetes Research Institute, Georgetown University, and Stevens Institute of Technology. Incentives and initiatives will also be established to promote the retention of talent, to ensure that doctors who train and develop here in New Jersey, stay and practice here.

In building a school of medicine from the ground up, we are in the enviable position of casting aside antiquated educational techniques and offering a new paradigm in which doctors train alongside the other professionals who will form the healthcare team.

This approach will ultimately lower healthcare costs by teaching medical students early in their careers to think as leaders about preventive medicine, value-based care, intramural and extramural partnerships, and efficiencies of scale – concepts that are critical for tomorrow’s doctors to meet governmental mandates and incentives to provide our entire population with high-quality, value-based, and compassionate healthcare.

The state-of-the-art facilities of the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University will ensure that students learn in the most advanced environment available in the study of medicine – an environment that can adapt to continual improvements in technology and pedagogy. The school of medicine will offer signature anatomy and simulation labs, classrooms, individual and group study rooms, and comfortable and modern amenities.

The founding dean of the new school of medicine, Bonita Stanton, M.D., was named in 2016. “Whether working with low income populations in the United States, women and children in Bangladesh, migrant workers in China or rural youth in Africa, Dean Stanton’s calling has been to bring the healing and compassion of health care to the world’s most vulnerable peoples,” said former Seton Hall University President A. Gabriel Esteban. Hackensack Meridian Health’s CEO Robert Garrett added, “Our rigorous search yielded outstanding candidates from across the nation…(and we are) confident that Dr. Stanton will lead this school of medicine to become one of the finest in the U.S.”