This week, the new program director and medical director will begin working to create Elon’s future physicians assistants program coming to Charlotte. The program has a tentative launch date of January 2027 and will be Elon’s second PA program — with its first program currently operating on Elon’s main campus.
This program will be a two year graduate program with 12 months of didactics — classroom instruction — and 12 months of clinicals — real world experience in the medical field. Elon’s current PA program functions the same way, but the two programs will have different curriculums.
Right now, Elon’s PA program located in Elon, sees between 2,000 and 3,000 applicants for 36 slots, according to Maha Lund, dean of the school of health sciences. This is part of what made leadership at the school interested in starting a second program. One of the program’s priorities is to ensure that PA students are integrated into the Charlotte community — through more than just their clinical rotations, Lund said. There are over 300 PA programs nationally, and Charlotte is the biggest city in the country to not have a PA program…