The UNC School of Medicine is expanding into Charlotte and Asheville.

The university has announced plans for regional campuses in those two cities, allowing the medical school to expand its class from 160 this year to 180 by 2012.

Those campuses will serve as clinical training sites for third and fourth-year med students.

In Asheville, the school will work in conjunction with the Mission Health System, which will contribute $7 million to accommodate students at its hospital, and the Mountain Area Health Education Center.

In Charlotte, the regional campus will collaborate with the Carolinas HealthCare System and UNC Charlotte.  The campus will be located at the Carolinas Medical Center, and Carolinas HealthCare will contribute $4 million to renovate its facility to accommodate students.

This initiative is a scaled-back version of an earlier plan to expand the UNC-CH med school to 230 students. That plan proved too costly.