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THE POLK STREET PROJECT A multimillion dollar renovation to the College of Medicine will help bring a revamped c A Building for Le I N ADDITION TO PROVIDING students with the financial assistance they need to flourish as physicians, the College of Medicine also is committed to enhancing the already excellent education it provides them in other ways. Reflecting a nationwide trend, the college has begun shifting from a curriculum focused on classroom lecture to one emphasizing interactive learning experiences. In November, then-Interim Dean Dimitri T. Azar reached an agreement with the University of Illinois at Chicago campus to implement a multimillion dol- lar renovation of the second, third and fourth floors of the historic College of Medicine Building, which will both accommodate this curricular shift and provide students with improved study spaces. "The medical school curriculum is going through transformation," says Saul Weiner, MD, the college's senior associate dean for educational affairs. "Medical schools are shifting away from the idea that just memorizing information is what you need to be a good doctor, particularly as the Inter- net makes information easier to access. What you need are the skills to find and evaluate information and to apply it appropriately." To develop students' critical thinking skills, the college is placing more emphasis on interac- tive team-based problem-solving activities that link basic science to clinical challenges. "You don't develop better, stronger critical thinking skills by lecturing to people," Weiner says. "You only get there by providing them with opportunities to man- age challenging situations, to work together to solve problems relevant to medicine and to learn how to function as a team with the support of technology." To enable this kind of learning, two lecture halls will be remodeled and equipped with state-of-the-art audiovisual capabilities—including broadband access and teleconferencing technology—so that students can gather in small groups and use the Internet to research problems together. A total of 21,000 square feet on the three floors will be renovated. In addition to the two lecture halls, the renovations also will include space on floors two through four that became vacant when the college opened its new research building. These rooms will be turned into classrooms that can double as student study areas when not in use, alleviating that need, as well. The rooms will be equipped with movable partitions, providing flexibility to accommodate different class sizes, along with white boards and video access. The college already has begun incorporating the changes into the curriculum. "What's limiting progress is the need for this improved space," says Weiner, who hopes that work on the renovations will begin this summer. "It's one thing to say we want to do more lectures, more team-based kinds of things, but you need the facilities to back that up," notes Jorge Girot- ti, PhD, associate dean and director, admissions and special curricular programs. "We not only are working on curricular transformation, we're also building a college environment that lines up with that goal." Kathleen Kashima, PhD, senior associate dean 20 | WINTER 2012