Expanding the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine to Athens and statewide is still the plan despite the governor's call for budget cuts, MCG officials said Friday.

School of Medicine Dean D. Douglas Miller gave his annual State of the School address Friday, in which he outlined ambitious plans to expand research collaboration and for MCG to take the lead in Georgia in residency training.

Despite calls for state institutions to prepare for a potential 6 percent budget cut, the University System of Georgia Board of Regents next week will review a budget request for $8 million more next fiscal year to fund medical expansion. That is on top of $10 million already allocated by the Legislature for that purpose.

A copy of the proposed budget for expansion obtained by The Augusta Chronicle shows that $12 million of the $18.5 million allocated would be spent in Athens, where the medical school satellite would be operated in partnership with the University of Georgia. That would allow the school to begin recruiting 40 students for its first class beginning in 2010, although a combined MD-Ph.D. program is expected to start there in 2009.

About $2.3 million would go to expanding a clinical campus in Albany to fund 15 student slots and 10-12 residency slots. An additional $1.6 million would go to a clinical campus in Savannah to establish 10-12 residency slots. Augusta would get about $2 million to help expand its class from 190 to 200 a year.

MCG's deans are to report back to Dr. Rahn with plans for cutting 6 percent that do not include cutting faculty.

"Certainly, it's hard to expand and contract," Dr. Rahn said. "So we have to balance our strategic investments with assuring that we're providing adequate support to our core operations to maintain excellence."

The expansion money is a "strategic funding initiative" on top of what the university system normally gets, so it shouldn't be considered part of the school's normal budget process, Dr. Rahn said.

"The state is faced with some very difficult decisions," Dr. Miller said. "My bias is of course that ... medical education and health, the relationship of that to the work force, are extremely important."

In hopes of expanding residency training, MCG officials will meet with their counterparts at other Georgia schools at a summit in October in Atlanta. MCG wants to take the lead in planning and wants to look at other states, such as Utah, where the planning and management of residencies is handled statewide, Dr. Miller said.

The school is also planning to debut a number of "discovery institutes" that will seek to combine the best efforts of laboratory and clinician researchers, such as the already established Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute. Among 43 medical schools of its size throughout the nation, MCG ranked second in the amount of National Institutes of Health funding per faculty member.

"That is a very important indicator that our science here is outstanding," Dr. Miller said.