Curriculum Renewal

Background

In February of 2020, the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs with support from the Dean of the School of Medicine, created the Curriculum Redesign Steering Committee.  This group was tasked with leading a redesign of the 4-year School of Medicine MD curriculum.  The impetus for change was an effort to refresh our curriculum of more than a decade to reflect current best practices in pacing and course structure, as well as to respond to the NBME’s decision to use pass/fail grading for the USMLE Step1 exam. The steering committee communicates regularly with all committees involved in the design and administration of the curriculum.

Curriculum Redesign Goals

• Provide students with the opportunity to accelerate entry into the clinical curriculum by converting the current two-pass education program into an integrated, one-pass, organ-system-based curriculum. 
• Utilize a comprehensive curriculum mapping project to fully integrate content throughout the pre-clerkship curriculum and remove redundancy.
• Utilize national curricular standards (USMLE Content Outline, discipline-specific curricula) to ensure that students are prepared for clinical clerkships as well as to succeed on national standardized examinations.
• Expand current curricular content in areas such as interprofessional collaboration, technological innovation and public health to prepare students for their future practice environments.
• Expand and integrate clinical skills training to enhance learning in diagnosis and clinical reasoning. 

Progress Reports of the Steering Committee