President's Message We Are What We Believe We Can Become by Clinton Adams, DO, FACHE, President and CEO Over the past five years, I have had the opportunity to visit with RVU faculty and leadership during Military Appreciation Day and cut suit demonstrations, gaining insight into the curricular model used at RVU. After my most recent visits—which included the interview process, the 2015 Commencement, and a full week at the end of September—it has been evident that RVU is a family of dedicated healthcare professionals, educators, and support staff that is clearly focused on preparing graduates to practice as team members in the uncertain future of rapidly changing medical technology and societal expectations. After serving for thirty years as a physician in the Navy and the past eleven years as a vice president, dean, and faculty member at Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine, it has become very clear that the adage, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" has never been more operant. Medical practice is under tremendous scrutiny and pressure to change. In an effort to contain the runaway costs of health care delivery, one must focus on the health of populations and the wise use of technology. The creation of medical homes and team-based practices that embrace the entire spectrum of health care professionals is necessary, because at the end of every healthcare encounter, there is a patient, a family, a community in need of compassionate care from trusted healers who display insight, integrity, and excellence in all they do.
"RVU is the Disruptive Model for Healthcare Education in the 21st Century" I firmly believe that RVU is positioned to be a disruptive model for medical education in the United States. In her recent book, Higher Education at Risk, Sandra Featherman challenges the traditional model of higher education and its reliance on traditional faculty models, higher and higher tuition to support bigger and bigger facilities,
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sports teams, and competitive research grants resulting in a secondary focus on curricular relevance and delivery. She points to the increasing relevance and success of the emergence of non-traditional education models in delivering timely, relevant curricular content to students on their terms. Of course, we can’t start an online medical school but we can continue to deliver curricular content in ways to which our “iGeneration” better understand and relate. Our research efforts should include a focus on our disruptive nature, measuring outcomes that will bring educators to our campus in their effort to stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different or better outcome. RVU has embraced the teachings of Peter Senge. He describes learning organizations in his book, The Fifth Discipline. He speaks of a shift of mind, a place where people discover how they create their reality and how they can change it. RVU is such a place because the faculty is already hard at work leading curricular initiatives and small group learning cells. We must continue to eliminate fear and enhance the sharing of individual knowledge and even missteps (errors). We will continue to enhance our efforts to use E-ffectiveness, E-fficiency and E-learning in creating an academic culture that will produce the Compassionate graduate who exemplifies Integrity and Excellence in all they will be called upon to do. I would be remiss in not extending my gratitude and appreciation for the work that Dr. Cheryl D. Lovell accomplished during her tenure as President of Rocky Vista University. She symbolically moved RVU and RVUCOM from a college to true University status by gaining Higher Learning Commission accreditation and national recognition. Her work on legislative policy and clearly developing priorities of concern for RVU have strengthened our strategic alignment, laying the groundwork for our role as future leaders in healthcare education.
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