Music The medical school at McMaster University welcomed its first small class of students in late summer of 1969. The school had been developed by the president of McMaster University at the time, Harry Thode. Together with a team of colleagues, of the founding fathers as we now know them, developed this remarkable, incredibly innovative place for medical education.
What I remember is when dad was first appointed to the role, it was a strategic appointment because he was a Hamilton boy. So that meant that my father had the task, not always pleasant task, of convincing the local community and also the local doctors that this was helpful for them and for their patients and for the community in general. I remember him talking about this dreadful meeting at Dale Wood School.
He came home and he said they stopped short of throwing rotten tomatoes, but it was everything else that, yeah. He's such an optimist. He just figured, yep, this is what you have to do to get the job done and we'll do it. The founding fathers really believed that the old way of training medical students was unproductive, ineffective and inefficient.
Ironically, problem-based learning didn't start at McMaster on the basis of evidence. It started as a reaction to wise and thoughtful and adventurous faculty and given that we were into the 1960s, it was time to do something really wild. They had this idea that they wanted to do things differently and better and a way that fit with the way people actually learned.
And essentially they deconstructed and then reconstructed the whole concept of medical education. They didn't have formal courses. They insisted on problem-based small group learning. Naturally, many students form themselves into study groups, but now it was a formalized part. Here's your tutorial group, bounce ideas, get things explained to you.
It's not about showing off your knowledge to each other, it's all about helping each other learn. They had a less than a three-year curriculum. And then, of course, the lack of exams, which was certainly very different. Even from where I was on the sidelines, of course, you know, I was a teenager at the time when the first class started and I would see them studying.
They're wearing shorts and beards and mustaches and the women all had long, long hair. And I thought, they're going to be doctors one day. Wow, that is really cool. It was just a most exciting time. The founders of the medical school really tore up the script in terms of how medical schools teach. When it came to research, they took research out of the hands of the traditional departments.
In those days, research was in fact siloed, which was not the case here. So part of the philosophy in arranging things this way was to encourage collaboration, work across disciplines. They created a quality of research that others then followed, and that was really the beginning of evidence-based medicine. So we went from about four or five initial programs to now a total of 22 research institutes or centers.
And in the last 15 years, we have been extraordinarily successful in bringing in research funding that have enabled us to really increase the research capacity of the institution. So I think philanthropy, in addition to the foresight of our founders, has really played an enormous role in where we stand today as one of the most research intensive schools on the planet. The most important gift was Mr. DeGroote's gift, the biggest gift in Canadian history then, still now 105 million.
And it transformed McMaster, transformed the School of Medicine, but a lot of boats were lifted. The entire university felt its impact. I genuinely admire the women and the men who have been so generous. These are people who have built their careers and created wealth, created jobs, and then are giving it away. And that to me is a wonderful, wonderful metric of being a great Canadian.
The Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine is now one of the great medical schools in the world. Mac was way out ahead early on, light years ahead. And as a result, I think Mac has influenced medical schools, not only across this country, but internationally. Evidence-based medicine, conducting groundbreaking research, those are the main reasons why people know McMaster.
McMaster is regarded as one of the leading research institutions in Canada and recognized as being a leader worldwide. In terms of our research intensity focused entirely on research, we're typically number one. All of those founders knew that things couldn't stay the same. They weren't about tradition. So I don't think they'd want to see tradition carried forward too much at McMaster as well, too.
So the challenge for Mac and for all of us here at this university is, okay, we were way ahead 30 years ago, 40 years ago. Everybody's caught up. What makes us different now and what's going to make us unique 5, 10, 25 years from now? The next part is maintaining the culture. So holding on to the culture that was started when we originally incepted the medical school, you know, 50 years ago.
This idea of innovation, this idea of breaking dogma, this idea of always challenging the status quo. We have to keep that culture and then we will continue to move forward into the future. I think it's important that the medical school stay grounded in the community. Educating those who are going to practice is critical, but you can't ever forget what the end goal is. Healthy communities.
