Some Mercer University medical school students will be able to attend school without spending a dime on tuition. On Friday, Gov. Nathan Deal is scheduled to join Mercer officials for an announcement about the new Physicians for Rural Georgia Scholarship Program. The first recipients of the scholarship will be announced as well. The scholarship will be awarded annually to seven or eight Mercer medical school students who commit to practicing in areas of rural Georgia after graduation. Mercer University received $35 million from the state of Georgia in 2016 for its continued efforts to place graduates in underserved areas of the state. The school decided to use all of the money for the scholarship program. The scholarship will cover 85 to 100 percent of tuition for a maximum of four academic years. The School of Medicine was established with a mission to educate professionals to meet the primary care and health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. With roughly half of the school’s graduates practicing in those areas, the scholarships could boost that number. The school’s mission and the scholarship share a similar goal. “There’s really not a difference. It’s just another way of achieving that goal,” said Kyle Sears, the media relations director at Mercer. “The scholarship offers a pretty rare opportunity for a med student to go through medical school and come out debt free.” The program is not only open for first-year students. If second-, third- or fourth-year students decide they want to practice in rural Georgia, the scholarship can be applied to the years already spent at the school, Sears said. Source
