and the Southern Baptist tradition, which further enhances Mercer's position as a national center of Baptist scholarship.
=== School of Medicine ===
The Mercer University School of Medicine, founded in 1982, is partially state funded and accepts only Georgia residents into the Doctor of Medicine program. The school's core mission is to train primary care physicians and other health professionals for service in rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. The school is consistently recognized for its focus on family medicine, and in 2005, U.S. News & World Report ranked the school 17th out of 126 accredited medical schools in the family medicine category. In addition to the Doctor of Medicine, the school offers master's programs in family therapy. The School of Medicine's teaching hospitals are the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, The Medical Center and St. Francis Hospital in Columbus.
The School of Medicine received additional state funding in …