Students Sample First Course From New Curriculum

This fall, students at IUSM will sample the first offering of the School's new, enhanced curriculum. Planning for a new curriculum was initiated in 1993 by Dean Emeritus Walter Daly, MD ('55). A committee headed by Steven Bodgewic, PhD, assistant dean for primary care education, spent two years assessing programs at the country's best medical schools, studying trends in health care delivery and the impact of discoveries in medical science on clinical medicine. Based on this work, the committee recommended an approach which would stress interdisciplinary education and be competency based.

In 1996, Dean Robert Holden, MD, established a new Curriculum Council under the leadership of Philip Breitfeld, MD, to implement these recommendations. The course beginning this semester, "Concepts of Health and Disease," teaches first-year students how to apply basic science concepts to clinical problems. A second new course, "Cell and Molecular Biology," is planned for 1998-99. It will integrate aspects of traditional basic science and modern biology. Still in the planning stage are changes to the clinical curriculum.

Nine core competencies will be integrated throughout the curriculum. The Academic Standards Committee and the Evaluation and Assessment Committee are developing tools to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and the competence of students in each component of the new curriculum.