Application For: Foundations Committee Student Representative Statement
From:
Andrew DesLauriers
Date:
4/4/21
As the Foundations Committee student representative, my goal would be to improve the consistency
and comprehensiveness of the foundations curriculum. While studying for Step 1, I found that I had a
good command over some of the content from foundations classes but for other portions of the
material I had to re-learn the basics and work up from there. The material that I was more confident in
was not necessarily taught most recently or in areas of personal interest to me. I came to the conclusion
that some of the material was taught in a way that allowed for better long-term memory while other
portions were taught in a way that was difficult to retain.
I believe in the potential of an active-learning based curriculum, and I think we had many excellent
session during our foundations years. That being said, we also had quite a few sessions that could have
been run more efficiently and pre-works that were somewhat disorganized and less-thancomprehensive. In these instances, I often thought to myself ‘I’ll learn this as well as I can for now, and
when Step comes around I’ll really make sure I have this concept down’. Now that Step is pass/fail and
will likely be de-emphasized moving forward, improving weaker areas of the curriculum is even more
important to provide students with a robust and comprehensive knowledge base moving into the
clerkship year.
As the Foundations Committee student representative, I will use feedback from other students to
identify the areas of the curriculum that would benefit most from reassessment and work to improve
the quality and consistency of the first two years of medical school for all future LCOM students. My
goal would be to help provide future students with a knowledge base that they have confidence in and
will benefit from for the rest of their careers.