The Medical Specialty Training Program was a division within Northwestern University Medical School for post-graduate education. It facilitated residencies and coursework for doctors to pursue specialties for practice within the broad medical field, based on requirements of various medical specialty boards. At the time of its inception, medical specialty training in the United States was largely informal. This program was a transitional phase in the formalization of medical specialty training, less formal than the Graduate Division of the Medical School later became, but more formal than the apprentice-style training that had existed. The program began in the fall of 1944 and ended in August of 1950, primarily because of concerns about the financial structure of the program, which depended on students receiving government subsidies. The Medical School restructured the program into its Graduate Division. Dr. Arthur R. Colwell, Sr., Professor of Medicine, directed the program with the assistance of Dr. Gordon W. Raleigh from its inception. Dr. Raleigh took over as Director September 1, 1949.
For more information on the program please see: "Principles of Graduate Medical Instruction: With a Specific Plan of Application in a Medical School" by Dr. Arthur R. Colwell, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 31, 1945; "Supervised Training for the Medical Specialties" by Dr. Arthur R. Colwell, Quarterly Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1947; "Planned Graduate Training in Internal Medicine" by Dr. Gordon W. Raleigh, The Journal of Medical Education, March 1951. These articles can be found in the authors' biographical files in the University Archives.
From the guide to the Records of the Medical Specialty Training Program, 1936-1951, (Northwestern University Archives)
