Graduate Courses and Masters in Clinical Investigation

A special educational course of study has been created to enable physicians who are in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology's Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellowship Program to obtain the MS degree as an integral part of their subspecialty education and training. Admission to the program is limited strictly to those physicians admitted to this Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)-approved fellowship program within the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine (MFM) at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, one of approximately 50 such fellowships in the United States.

The master's program is the first of its kind in the United States, consisting of a minimum of 30 quarter hours of study undertaken during the three years of the fellowship program. Faculty in the MFM division provide the teaching for 12 of the courses of the program, complemented by faculty from Genetics teaching a genetics course, faculty from Preventive Medicine teaching a biostatistics course and various research faculty who advise on important ethical issues in a formal Research Ethics course.

Completion of a thesis project with a successful presentation and defense during the third year of the fellowship is required for completion of the program. The primary goal of the program, which awarded the first master's degree in 2000, is to prepare MFM fellows for successful completion of board certification and an academic career in this subspecialty.