As we prepare for our LCME accreditation site visit, it’s helpful to understand how our curriculum is intentionally designed and continuously evaluated.
Oversight of our curriculum is provided by the Medical Student Curriculum Committee. Having representation from faculty and students across departments and campuses, this committee ensures that decisions are informed by broad perspectives.
The backbone of our curriculum is our program objectives, which are the outcomes that students achieve across the entire four years of the curriculum. These program objectives are based on a competency framework which focuses on the abilities and skills that students should achieve by graduation. These objectives guide every course and learning activity, so that what we teach and assess stays aligned with what our students must ultimately be able to do. Importantly, the learning objectives for courses and clerkships are explicitly linked back to these program objectives, creating a clear line of sight from each learning experience to our overall outcomes.
Our curriculum is rigorously evaluated to ensure it is accomplishing its goals, helping us continuously improve its effectiveness and the student experience. Each course and clerkship undergoes an annual review by the Curriculum Committee, which examines the organization, learning activities, student performance, course/clerkship director perspectives, evaluations of faculty teaching, and student feedback. As part of these reviews, the committee also monitors experiences and outcomes across campuses to ensure students at each campus have comparable teaching and achieve the same outcomes.
In addition to course reviews, there are structured reviews of each curricular phase to ensure courses within the phase are well aligned and that students are prepared for what comes next. The Curriculum Committee also conducts an evaluation of the entire curriculum to ensure our graduates are achieving the competencies defined by the program objectives and are prepared for residency. Throughout the reviews at each level of the curriculum, action items are identified that lead to continual improvement in the effectiveness of our curriculum, all to ensure we are successfully preparing our graduates for their careers as physicians.