In my last Dean’s Letter, I outlined how the School is evolving over time, with a shift in our educational, research, and service functions from an emphasis on the individual (whether provider, researcher, or patient) to an emphasis on teams (of providers or researchers) and populations of people at risk of disease. Since the School serves all North Dakotans, we have been focused in particular on the role that the School should play in helping to develop an optimal health care delivery system for the state, now and in the future. A critical component of that approach has been the development of a strategic plan that focuses on health provider workforce preparation and development. Prepared in conjunction with the School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) Advisory Council, the plan is grounded in four basic principles—reduce disease burden, retain more of our provider graduates, train more providers, and work to improve the efficiency of our health care delivery system. One of the essential pillars of our plan—expansion of class size—is in progress. We’ll welcome eight additional medical students and 15 health sciences students this summer, and the expansion of residencies in North Dakota—all with a rural focus—is well underway. An essential component of our class size expansion is a commensurate expansion of our physical plant. Since the state invested about $1.5 million in 1985 to acquire the old St. Michael’s Hospital in Grand Forks and convert it into our current main educational building, limited subsequent investments have been made in the School’s educational facilities. However, we are extremely grateful for the Legislature’s generous investment in the Center for Family Medicine clinic building in Bismarck, which is just in the process of opening. Thanks to financial support authorized during the last session of the North Dakota Legislature, JLG Architects in conjunction with the national design firm of Perkins+Will recently completed a space study intended to assess the ability of the current instructional facilities to accommodate the current and planned class size expansion. First, the consultants concluded we already are optimally utilizing our current space, exceeding national benchmarks for usage. Second, the consultants concluded we clearly will need additional facility space to handle the class size expansion already underway. Finally, they concluded that it would be inadvisable to try to develop additional educational space simply by renovating the current building, as various structural and architectural features of the building make it ill advised to invest additional resources into it. Rather, the consultants proposed three options—a combination of partial renovation of the current building with additional adjacent construction of about 80,000 square feet of new space at an estimated cost of $38.5 million; renovation and construction of about 169,000 square feet of new space at an estimated cost of $68.3 million; and a completely new instructional building of about 377,000 square feet along with repurposing of the current building at an estimated cost of $124 million. The space report has been endorsed by the SMHS Advisory Council and was presented to the State Board of Higher Education as well as the Interim Health Services Committee of the Legislature this past April. The construction of more space at the School is the No. 1 capital construction priority of UND and UND President Robert O. Kelley.