Facts and Figures
The Department of Physics at East Carolina University established the master’s degree with a focus in Medical Physics (MS-MP) in 1989 to complement the ongoing MS-level graduate program in Applied Physics initiated in 1970. The need for highly qualified medical physicists was well recognized at that time, and the administration was in support of expanding the curriculum to meet the needs of the community. The Medical Physics program was initiated with the full partnership of the Department of Radiation Oncology in ECU’s Brody School of Medicine. It was recognized that to be successful the program must have a strong clinical component; the Department of Radiation Oncology was firmly committed to that end. Several faculty members from the Department of Radiation Oncology maintain joint appointments, while others maintain adjunct appointments with the Department of Physics.
MS-MP: Program Evolution and History
The first graduate of the Medical Physics master’s degree, Ms. Pamela White, completed her degree in 1991. From its inception, the program has been very productive. Soon after, action was taken to limit the enrollment to 4 new students per year. This decision was implemented to maintain a sufficiently small enrollment to assure that adequate hands-on clinical training could be provided. It was felt that quality education was more important than the quantity of students, and that clinical hands-on experience was the defining factor in graduating qualified medical physicists. It has only been in recent years, based on increased staffing at the Department of Radiation Oncology, that the limit on the number of new students has been increased. With the accreditation of the program in January 2006, a large number of quality students applied to the program. The last three years saw the enrollment stabilize at around 15 students, accepting 6 to 8 new MS-MP students per year.
This increase in enrollment, combined with our commitment to clinical training, exemplifies the University’s commitment to a strong and sustained Medical Physics program. Graduating students have accepted numerous positions, ranging from staff positions at M.D. Anderson, Harvard University, and Duke University, to becoming medical physicists at regional hospitals in more than ten states in the US and two countries around the world. Several of our recent graduates now are in positions of chief physicist at local and regional hospitals.
The PhD program in Biomedical Physics hosts around 20 doctoral students, accepting 4 to 5 new doctoral students each year. Our master’s students have the benefit of an expanding research base as well as the ability to continue their education within East Carolina University. Within recent years some of our doctoral students have pursued—in parallel to their PhD studies—the master’s in Medical Physics while conducting their doctoral research in Medical Physics and Radiation Biology. The PhD program also offers a new concentration to allow highly qualified students to earn both the accredited MS-MP concentration together with the PhD in Biomedical Physics.