Minutes from the Curriculum Committee Meeting
1/12/11
Topic
Attending:
Minutes
Information Items
Consent Agenda
Discussion
Bacon, Cross, Dent, Dreesen, Enarson, Farrell, Gilliland,
Heck (phone), Hobbs, Newton, Perry , Serra, Shaheen,
Slatt, Steiner, Stone, Wood, White (phone) Guest: Bynum
 The minutes were approved unanimously.
 Campus visits to Asheville and Charlotte went very
well. The second class at Asheville is thriving; the
meeting in Charlotte was very productive. In Charlotte,
we plan a full track of 12 students with all clerkships
for next year, and we started to plan Admissions and
Promotions committees and other integration. We
plan site visits to all campuses this May with a focus on
LCME and comparability. Between that and the
Campus Director group, we have extensive statewide
infrastructure well in hand.
 The TBL pilot has gone extremely well. We plan TBL
pilots in 9 courses; the participating faculty have
formed a learning network to exchange information
about what works and what doesn’t work.
 Tom Bacon has agreed that AHEC will fund
experiments in a new model of teaching practices. The
idea is to have a practice that makes a substantial
commitment to students (e.g., 10 months a year, two
students at a time) with more pay and faculty
development.
 Welcome to Marcia Hobbs and Larry Marks who will
be joining the SOM Curriculum Committee.
 Please note that we start monthly meetings for 1.5
hours in February. There’s a lot of work to do. We are
also setting up a retreat in March. Thanks for your
hard work and willingness to meet more often.
 Further explanation of thee consent agenda items:

o Note the email regarding proctoring policy – a
faculty member should attend each exam.
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o Capstone moved to April – will allow timely
grades and improve access to international
activities.
o Change in tuition structure - by semester
rather than by course - will remove barrier to
more clinical rotations in the senior year and
to two-week electives. We will try to have a
part-time student fee as part of that structure.
 Questions:
o When will travel modules be available?
Action Items
All consent items
were approved.
OME will verify NBME
faculty proctor rules
and distribute
information about the
international travel
and safety and
cultural competency
modules.
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Competencies
Implementation
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Planned for February 1st – they are not
yet up.
o Will faculty members be required for shelf
exams?
 Probably not. We’ll follow the NBME
rules.
Where we are now: We have defined SOM
competencies and milestones, and the 96 common
conditions that will be the skeleton for our curriculum.
We are now in the process of mapping where the
curricula of interest and core diseases are taught over
four years to define gaps and redundancies as well as
teaching methodology. We are starting the process of
describing the core competencies to students, faculty
and others. The next step will be to define our
educational methodologies and the resources
necessary for them. Then, how we assess students,
what we need to add, and then finally roll it all up in a
system for regular program evaluation.
We discussed a draft graphic to illustrate this process. 
It’s important to let each year’s Curriculum Committee
just do it – give them as much freedom as possible.
It’s important to integrate GQ results into the regular
review of the curriculum as much as possible.
Timeline is critical. The judgment is that the year
curriculum committees need the experience of
thinking about these issues overall but they need to
process it relatively quickly and get their opinions to us
in the SOM Curriculum Committee by the end of
February.
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The section on clinical and translational research
seems out of place in the general diagram.
Should we use the term “clinical experience” or
“clinical log”? One is the measure of the other.
Another specific issue is calendars and student work
hours (to be discussed later).
We discussed formative feedback and clinical courses
and how that would be done – need some sort of
formal process for letting students know where they
stand – this needs to be communicated with them . It
may be different as giving them a website on which
they can look up. Key resources: faculty who would
get to know students over time across
courses.Teaching practices which had a lot of
experience teaching students .
Educational Assessments – We began a discussion
about educational methodologies and what we are
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We will revise the
graphic and begin to
use it in the
discussions.
Newton will task a
separate group to deal
with clinical and
translational research.
Out of the discussion,
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Expectations for
Course & Clerkship
Directors
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Clerkship Scheduling
Flexibility for Junior
Students
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using. The goal long-term is to link the methodologies
to the competencies but this was a beginning of a
conversation. Many comments addressed what might
be called resources or structures – the importance of
continuity faculty, teaching practices.
We need to look at lectures vs. small group activity .
A more enhanced observation or assessment at the
end of the fourth year or possibly at the end of the
first year.
Moving beyond MCQ’s to oral examinations and peer
evaluation in the first years.
Direct observation of clinical skills – having it done
during each clerkship. Opportunities to apply the
scientific method - that is data, next steps, evaluations
and so on.
The content of the list was deemed appropriate. A key
issue was how to bring it to the Course Directors each year will have a different solution.
It’s important to underscore the rushed timeframe of
this. Acknowledge the amount of work they are doing
but also the deadlines and importance for LCME.
In follow-up to the discussion in November, we’ve
learned that:
o The number of students deferring electives
out of their third year has dropped
dramatically from 80’s to 30’s, in part because
of capacity issues and in part because of a shift
in students’ concerns and advising.
o Virtually no students have used the proposed
two-week electives, which were intended as
an opportunity to provide flexibility.
o There continues to be substantial student
sentiment for flexibility in the third year but
also concern that they need the whole clinical
core in advance of Step II testing.
In the longer term, the competency process will allow
us to rethink how much time needs to go to each
clerkship and what the core function is of each
clerkship . For this year, the core issue is whether we
should support flexibility for students and following
students’ choices regarding which clerkship to defer.
Newton will come up
with an initial list of
educational
methodologies and
resources necessary
that we can then build
on.
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Newton will follow up
with a draft email and
the list to each of the
committees.
Each Curriculum
Committee will
determine both how
they want to send that
note out and how
they will interface
with individual faculty
members.
 Newton will touch
base with relevant
Clerkship Firectors
and department
leaders develop
to better two
week options.
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Comments included:
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ICM Current Status
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It’s very difficulty to predict actual capacity and
needs given student life events, MD-PhD and MDMPH.
 The number of sites for Outpatient Medicine is
shrinking.
 Some students have reported to their advisors
that they don’t think that they are going to be
given a choice of clerkship to defer, so they are
not putting in for electives.
 With respect to the practical choice for next year,
the sense of the group was:
o Some voices for giving more flexibility in
the third year, affirming our prior policy.
o It will be important to help the students
have realistic expectations of what’s
possible in the next year.
o Within those constraints, it’s important to
give students their own choices.
Deb Bynum was here to answer questions on their
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current proposal. The Office of Medical Education will
follow up regarding logistics/operations to explore
feasibility. The discussion was limited to the core
competencies and how they fit in.
The overall structure feels like it will get to the
competencies much better with smaller working
groups and evened time. Anecdotal experiences with
groups of six and two subgroups of three seem to
work well.
It will be important to pilot seeing patients within the
system with no prior consideration to the students .
There’s clearly a lot of benefit and from a systems
based practice but will it happen? What will be done in
the hospital blocks moving forward? Will we be able to
do 160 students? How much experience will there be
with respect to actual outpatient visits, which is the
focus of the first year?
The list of competencies addressed is impressive. It’s
important not to overload the agenda of ICM.
We also asked the broader question of integration into
the curriculum: Is it possible to begin thinking about
ICM in a way that begins to drive the content of other
individual blocks?
Currently, we are co-scheduling ICM and blocks. This
can be valuable sometimes but it is much less than full
Newton and OME will
follow up with ICM,
explore feasibility and
define pilots and bring
back further
information as they
move forward. It may
be important to better
link into CC1 and CC2
for part of this
planning process.
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LCME Issue –
Monitoring Student
Workloads
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integration seen in other schools courses. Should we
try for this the next time around? There might be a
significant advantage to doing that but it might be very
difficult.
There was discussion about whether the new ACGME
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guidelines should apply to medical students. The
answer was “no”. They are focused on interns - and
learners at a different stage with different needs. The
committee reaffirmed without much discussion our
formal policy of using the old rules – no more than 80
hours/week, 10 hour rest and no more than 30 hours
on at one time. The issue was raised whether students
always get 10 hours off. We’ve assessed the 80 hours
but not the 10 hours. Consensus was that it was
important to do that.
How should we address duty hours workload for first
and second year students? Class hours are clearly
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limited. We could do this by asking students in their
evaluations whether the workload was appropriate
and embed that into the focus group process, and
then in roll up, we would review the courses and the
schedules and make the workload a routine part of
course review in the first couple of years.
OME will send out a
notice of the current
policy with the 10hour rest period to all
Clerkship and Campus
Directors and will
begin to collect data
on this from students
as soon as possible.
Future Curriculum
Committee meeting
will review the data.
OME will embed
questions about
student satisfaction
with workload –
appropriate vs. not
appropriate – in the
first and second years’
standard course
evaluations. We will
include this and we
will integrate review
of workload into
student focus groups,
peer review and the
proposed review of
calendars and
curriculum on a year
by year basis.
Curriculum Committee Meetings (monthly) in 238 MacNider:
 2/3 – 4-5:30pm
 3/7 – 5-6:30pm
 4/11 – 5-6:30pm
 5/2 – 5-6:30pm
 6/6 – 5:30-7pm
 7/11 – 5-6:30pm
Mini Retreat – March 18th – 1:30-5pm – 238 MacNider.
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