Keck Graduate Institute: Courses, Admission, Cost

Keck Graduate Institute which was established in 1997. It is a private graduate university situated in Claremont, California. In 1997, the university was established by Henry Riggs and it is the newest and 7th member of the Claremont Consortium. The university is headed by the president Sheldon Schuster. The institution named after W.M. Keck Foundation received a 50 million dollars endowment from it. In 2002, the university awarded its first Master of Bioscience degree. Henry Riggs, the founder of the university, was the institution’s first serving president till the year 2003.

The university authorized Jay Mario Molina as the Dean of the new School of Medicine. The university provides innovative certificates and postgraduate degrees in Genetic, Health Sciences, Pharmacy and Business with a keen focus on team collaborations, hands-on industry experiences and industry projects. It provides a 4-year undergraduate course, the Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute in collaboration with the Minerva project. The university also provides a Master of Science in Genetic Counseling Program and Human Genetics, which have been provided accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Genetic Counseling.

The university’s academic courses are divided into three schools – School of Medicine, School of Applied Sciences and School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. It caters to 4 research centres, namely the Bioprocessing Centre, the Centre for Rare Disease Therapies, the Science Heritage Centre and the Centre for Biomarker Research. In 2000, Ionian Technologies was established. It was the first spin-off company to commercialize technology developed at the university. It mainly focuses on molecular diagnostics for infectious and emerging diseases. In the year 2004, it was awarded a contract to develop a handheld biothreat detector using isothermal amplification of DNA. The university’s other startups are Claremont BioSolutions and Zuydar Pharmaceuticals.