NEW ORLEANS, La. — The new medical school created by Xavier University of Louisiana and Ochsner Health now has a home. On Thursday, school leaders held a ribbon-cutting and blessing for the teaching center of the Xavier Ochsner College of Medicine in downtown New Orleans, La.
The center fills 72,000 square feet inside Benson Tower in the BioDistrict downtown. It holds classrooms built for team-based learning, teaching labs and shared spaces meant to bring students and faculty together.
The school will be the only medical college at a historically Black university anywhere in the Gulf South. It earned preliminary accreditation in October from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, and it is now taking applications for its first class, which will start in 2027.
Students will spend their first two years in the Benson Tower classrooms and labs. In years three and four they will rotate through clinical clerkships at Ochsner hospitals, including Ochsner’s flagship New Orleans medical center, its children’s hospital and its Baptist campus, and they will also train in community settings.
Xavier President Reynold Verret said the day was less about a building than about the students who will train there and the patients they will eventually treat. Founding dean Leonardo Seoane said graduates will be ready to lead and to adapt to what their communities need.
Ochsner Health chief executive Pete November also addressed the crowd at the ceremony. Organizers say the goal is to train doctors who will improve health across the region, from the Gulf South outward. The curriculum will stress working across disciplines, hands-on clinical skill and compassion for patients.
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