Xavier Ochsner opens its Center for Medical Education in Benson Tower
The 72,000-square-foot center in the BioDistrict was formally opened and blessed on Thursday. It will be the academic home of the new medical college, whose first students arrive in 2027.
NEW ORLEANS: The Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine formally opened its Center for Medical Education on Thursday, Nov. 12, giving the new medical school a finished academic home in Benson Tower a year before its first students arrive.
The center occupies 72,000 square feet inside the tower in the BioDistrict, the downtown cluster the city has been building around its hospitals and research institutions. The college will run its teaching from there, in rooms built for team-based learning alongside education laboratories and shared spaces for students, faculty and staff.
Thursday's ceremony was a blessing as well as an opening, and the college's own account of the day lists the speakers. Mayor Helena Moreno addressed the gathering, as did Gayle Benson, the owner of the Saints and the Pelicans. Leaders and board representatives of both parent institutions also took part.
Applications open for 2027
The opening lands in the middle of recruitment. In October the college cleared the preliminary accreditation step with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the clearance a new medical school needs before it can recruit a class. Applications for the inaugural class are now open through the American Medical College Application Service, and the first students are due in 2027.
The sequence behind Thursday is short and fast by medical school standards. Xavier University of Louisiana and Ochsner Health formed the college in 2024. It earned candidate status in October 2025, hosted an accreditation survey visit in June 2026, and cleared preliminary accreditation this fall.
The only HBCU medical college in the Gulf South
The college is the only historically Black college of medicine in the Gulf South, and one of only a handful of HBCU medical schools in the country. It pairs Xavier, whose science and health programs have sent generations of students on to medical degrees, with Ochsner, the health system whose hospitals will host much of its students' clinical training.
The training path runs in two halves. Students in their first and second years will learn in the new center's classrooms and laboratories. In the third and fourth years they move into clinical clerkships across Ochsner facilities, among them Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, Ochsner Children's and Ochsner Baptist, with community-based placements alongside the hospital work.
The stated aim reaches past the building. The college says it intends to grow the physician workforce for New Orleans and the wider Gulf South, a region short of doctors, and to train physicians prepared to lead and to respond to the needs of the communities they serve. Thursday's opening turns that aim into a timetable: a finished center, an open application window, and a first class less than a year away.
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