Message from the vice dean

A message from the vice dean

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, medical education was evolving thanks to the demands of modern healthcare. The pandemic, however, served as a clarifying agent and revealed themes that are now our educational guideposts. You will learn more about our curriculum as you peruse these pages, but, here is a broad view of our goals: • Integrate fundamental and clinical science. Clinical faculty teach students throughout their journey. Moreover, basic science faculty has reconnected and grounded the clerkship year and advanced application phase with concepts once confined to the classroom. • Focus on professional identity formation, cultural competence and health justice. • Emphasize the physician’s role in promoting health rather than merely managing disease by connecting active learning with community engagement. COVID-19 also removed barriers we didn’t even know existed. When faced with crisis, they fell away, leaving only our pact with students and with the public to produce the best doctors possible. Along the way, we developed new means to work together, and many novel innovations based on a new understanding of technology. Although creativity is not necessarily an educational theme, we’ll keep the freedom and energy our faculty experienced during the crisis alive and use it to continue to innovate and to mold physicians prepared to embrace the future.

Sincerely, William Jeffries, PhD Vice President for Academic Affairs Vice Dean for Medical Education