The University of Minnesota Medical School uses VSLO to manage visiting student applications. For any questions about visiting students, please contact the VSLO Coordinator at vslo@umn.edu. 

See the bottom of this page for information about the international visiting students process (GMER).

General Visiting Student Process

• In early January, the VSLO coordinator will reach out to coordinators about elective offerings for visiting students. We need to know which electives you plan to offer to visiting students and any additional application requirements for your electives. Once the VSLO coordinator has built the catalog, we will open it for applications for the upcoming academic year (usually around March 1st). 

• After the Add/Drop deadline, the VSLO coordinator will send a spreadsheet with all applicants for your electives. It is the course coordinator's job to communicate to the VSLO coordinator which student's they would like to extend an offer. Please make sure you pay attention to any offer deadlines communicated by the VSLO coordinator. We typically cannot accept visiting students less than five weeks before the elective start date. Exceptions can be made if we have an existing affiliation agreement with the applicant's home institution. The VSLO coordinator will review compliance/eligibility and extend an offer to the student. 

• Once a student has confirmed their offer, VSLO coordinator will work on the following: 

  • Setting the student up in MEdIS, so they appear in your roster. 

  • Billing the student for their rotation.

  • Passing along student details for EPIC access (if rotating at Fairview).

  • Initiating an affiliation agreement as needed. 

  • Working with the student to initiate a MNDHS background study. 

  • Tracking on any additional compliance requirements (immunizations, basic life support training, malpractice insurance, etc.). 

• Visiting students who are rotating at MHealth Fairview and need a badge should be referred directly to Olivia in the Fairview Education Office (Olivia.Haines@fairview.org). She will work with the VSLO coordinator to issue a badge.

Onboarding for Visiting Students

• It is the responsibility of the coordinator to make sure that sites receive roster information for all students placed with them. This includes visiting students. 

• For health systems that use Clinician Nexus, rosters are streamed from MEdIS into Clinician Nexus, but coordinators are asked to monitor them for accuracy. 

• Onboarding for visiting students should go directly through the site the student is placed at. The one exception to this is the VA Medical Center. Please notify onboarding@umn.edu immediately if you have a visiting student placed at the VA Medical Center. For all other sites, please contact the health system's education office or your site contact directly. For information about the onboarding process at the VA Medical Center, please see the Medical Student Onboarding page. 

How to Invite Visiting Students to your Canvas Site

Gmail and other non UMN email accounts will not work to invite visiting students to access Canvas; they must have a UMN x500. To obtain their x500, start by creating a sponsored account for each of your visiting students. 

Once you have obtained their UMN sponsored account x500, you may invite visiting students to your site using the Observer role. 

• In your Canvas site, under the Course Navigation menu, click the People link.

• Click on the + People button.

• In the box that pops up, ensure Add user(s) by Email Address is selected. Then, type the visiting student's full UMN email address, including @umn.edu, in the box (if inviting multiple visiting students at once, separate multiple email addresses with commas; they must be in the same period as each other to use one invite).

• Then, choose Observer from the Role drop-down menu.

• From the Section drop-down menu, select the proper period the visiting student is enrolled [e.g. 004 UMNTC CAPY 7603 (Summer 2023) = S4]. This is important; if you select an incorrect period, your visiting student will not have access due to the unique participation dates set for each period.

• Click the checkbox next to Can interact with users in their section only.

• Then, click the Next button.

• Then, click the Add Users button.

Once you have completed the steps, you will be able to view the visiting student(s) you just added and confirm their role is Observer by clicking on People. On the People page, you will see their name, UMN email address, and that they are Observing: nobody; the other columns should be blank. 

NOTE: Observers cannot participate in Discussions, submit Assignments, or take Quizzes. If for some reason you need your visiting students to have official Student roles in your Canvas site in order to do one of those things, please contact Andrea Medina for assistance. For more info regarding the Observer's specific access, please see this resource.

VSLO access

Email vslo@umn.edu  and the VSLO coordinator send an email invitation to VSLO. You will be set up for the Coordinator view which includes access to view applications and electives. 

Aquifer access

If you would like visiting students to be granted access to Aquifer, email lope0165@umn.edu with the name and home institution email address of the student(s). 

International Students

Visiting medical students from domestic LCME-accredited medical schools and COCA-accredited medical schools ONLY may apply for selected elective rotations at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

International medical students are not accepted unless a formal agreement exists between their medical school and the University of Minnesota. For a list of medical schools with whom the University of Minnesota has formal agreements, please visit the website for the Global Medical Education & Research Program.

Please refer all requests from international students looking for placement at the UMN Medical School to Shannon Benson in GMER at benson@umn.edu. 

For additional guidance on how to proceed when departments, courses, and faculty get requests from international students who do not attend one of our affiliated institutions, please see this communication from Shannon Benson.