The following is the text of a letter from Dr. Maryellen Gusic. You can read the original letter here:
Dear colleagues,
First, allow me to begin by thanking each of you for your ongoing work to design our new curriculum. Your efforts to design innovative, integrated courses have been impressive and your ongoing dedication and enthusiasm is inspiring. Despite the challenge of this task, you have come together to define course objectives, learning objectives for the sessions within the course and your teams have begun to outline the types of teaching strategies and assessment methods that can be used to address the competencies and evaluate learning.
Your efforts have given us a tremendous amount of material that now can be used in the critical next phase of course development—looking across the courses and phases of the curriculum, mapping content, appraising the depth and breadth of material being presented and gauging if we have crafted a unified and coordinated series of learning experiences that will ensure that all of our graduates will meet the expectations expressed in our institutional learning objectives.
As stated throughout the various stages of the curriculum reform, we all share the goal of excellence in this work. As teachers, this is our aim not only on behalf of our students but also on behalf of their future patients. None of us want to compromise on this essential goal. As such, I am writing to ask for your support and your continued commitment as we move our target implementation date for the new curriculum to August of 2015. This will allow us the time to accomplish the next phase of course development. We can then move forward and identify the course leaders and statewide faculty who will finish the planning process and work with faculty, staff and the leaders on each campus to address the logistics of implementing the courses across our nine campuses.
I appreciate your partnership and remain available to answer any questions and to hear your ideas and feedback. I and members of the UME team will hold “town hall” question and answer sessions over the next several weeks to talk more about the new curriculum and our plans for this ongoing work. Please join us on:
February 13, 2014 at 7am-8am in MS 186
February 20, 2014 at 5pm-6pm in MS B11
February 21, 2014 at 12:15pm-1:15pm in Fairbanks 5005
Videoconferencing will be available for each session. Instructions for accessing the meeting are available here:
I am grateful to be able to work with you on this important and significant project.
Maryellen E. Gusic MD
Executive Associate Dean for Educational Affairs
Dolores and John Read Professor of Medical Education
Professor of Pediatrics
