URBANA A new University of Illinois college of medicine in Urbana has cleared its first hurdle, though a more significant test will come in March.

The campus Academic Senate voted Monday to establish a small, engineering-focused medical school, billed as a new way to train physician-scientists for the 21st century and a "game-changing opportunity" for the campus.

Proposed last year by Chancellor Phyllis Wise, the medical school would be developed in partnership with Carle Health System, which has pledged more than $100 million toward the effort. As planned, it would use no state funding and be independent of the existing College of Medicine headquartered in Chicago, which operates regional campuses in Peoria, Rockford and Urbana.

"This is really a historic vote," Wise told senators Monday. "We do not start colleges very often."

The idea must still win approval from a university-wide Senates Conference and UI trustees, who are awaiting a recommendation due in March from President Bob Easter. The president is reviewing the plan and an alternative proposed by the UI College of Medicine, which would create a new "Translational BioEngineering Institute" with the College of Engineering at Urbana to promote biomedical research and economic development, in lieu of a new college of medicine.

Monday's discussion about the new college of medicine generated a few criticisms of Carle complaints about the health entity not paying its fair share of property taxes or questioning Carle's own billing as a "top 100" medical center. Carle Vice President Stephanie Beever deflected the tax question, saying it was up to state and federal courts to sort out and highlighting Carle's charity care.

But most comments about the proposal were supportive, including many from faculty at the existing regional medical school, which was created in the early 1970s.

"This is the most innovative thing I've heard of since then," said George Ordal, emeritus professor of biochemistry at the medical school. "It is a truly great idea."

The new plan would keep the existing regional medical school, which trains 100 first-year medical students every year, 75 upper-division students, and about 120 students in the Medical Scholars program, who earn both a medical degree and a Ph.D. in other disciplines.

Medical faculty at Urbana have complained for years about an unwieldy administrative arrangement of answering to a medical dean in Chicago but working with colleagues in Urbana.

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Senate OKs Urbana medical school