SAGINAW, MI — Work is under way to construct one of two Central Michigan University College of Medicine Saginaw campuses.Stephen Lawrence, CMU's associate vice president of facilities management, said steel work began Monday, March 24, at 1632 Stone outside Covenant Healthcare.

The university is building two facilities in Saginaw for its newly-opened College of Medicine, one at Covenant and the other attached to St. Mary's of Michigan's Health Education Center, 800 S. Washington.

Jim Knight, CMU College of Medicine marketing director, said the building at St. Mary's hospital is in planning stages, and there is no date set for construction.

The $25 million, 46,000-square-foot facility near Covenant hospital will house a simulation center and four advanced-technology classrooms, along with labs, classrooms and a library. Third- and fourth-year medical students and residentsthe city. Union contractors will construct two-thirds of the facility.

The Covenant campus on Saginaw's West Side should be complete by May 2015.

“It creates a new vibrancy for the whole center city area,” said JoAnn Crary, Saginaw Future president. "It’s great to see the building taking shape."

The CMU College of Medicine opened in August with its first class of 64 students, 17 of whom come from the Great Lakes Bay Region. The second and subsequent classes will have 104 students.

More than 3,000 students applied for the second class.

Students will spend two years in Mount Pleasant and two years doing clinical work in hospitals in Saginaw and throughout northern and mid-Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.

The college is designed to train doctors to work in Michigan’s under-served rural and urban communities