Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/678009
dean's message I L L I N O I S M E D I C I N E | 1 dean's message HE DATE APRIL 6, 2016, WILL BE NOTABLE IN THE HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. On this day, the College's executive committee voted unanimously to approve an unprecedented transformational curriculum for all of our campuses. This marks the first major update in the way our medical students learn in nearly 50 years. Our college educational leadership, led by Drs. Raymond Curry and George Kondos, has banded together to reshape how our future physicians will learn and ensure they are well prepared to enter advanced training in their residencies. As the College of Medicine gains national attention by advancing into a new era of learner-centered medical education, our students will benefit from well-designed courses that are delivered simultaneously across all of our regional campuses. In the fall of 2017, Peoria and Rockford also will be welcoming first-year medical students who will be completing all four years of their training in their respective locations. This new curriculum features a transformational path from classroom teaching to active, hands-on learning. This will provide more time for students to prepare for their post-graduate career paths. The traditional discipline-based curriculum will be replaced by an organ system-based, patient-centered curriculum, which will give our students a solid foundation of basic and clinical sciences—as well as social sciences and the humanities—linked, from the onset, to the patient experience. In addition to the highly regarded curricular tracks of urban medicine (UMED), rural medicine (RMED) and global medicine (GMED), our college has opened a new IMED curricular path. This innovation medicine program is an interdisciplinary track that aims to train the enrolled students to be health technology innovators. Twelve students have joined our inaugural class. They, and those who follow in their footsteps in coming years, will help to capture the convergence between engineering and medicine as they engage in design projects and innovative life-changing medical devices and systems. Three new stellar basic science department heads have recently joined the college: Simon Alford, PhD, leads anatomy and cell biology; Susan Ross, PhD, heads up microbiology and immunology; and Jan Kitajewski, PhD, our new chief in physiology and biophysics. In this issue you will read about their accomplishments and plans to achieve our vision of first-rate translational, clinically-relevant science, based on an ever-stronger foundation of basic science. We look forward to these highly accomplished researchers and the many faculty they will attract to our College to advance knowledge and make seminal discoveries that will be translated to the care of our patients. The three main overarching themes that have always guided the leadership of the college are those of excellence, community engagement and innovation. In this issue of Illinois Medicine, you will read about these three important themes as they apply to each component of our tripartite mission: value-based patient care, clinically relevant research, and learner- centered education. We welcome your comments and we are thankful for your commitment to, and support of, the University of Illinois College of Medicine. We value your support to help our students gain a world-class education, our researchers make seminal discoveries, and our clinicians provide impassioned patient care. T Dimitri T. Azar, MD, MBA Executive Dean, University of Illinois College of Medicine B.A. Field Endowed Chair of Ophthalmologic Research Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology, Bioengineering and Pharmacology P H O T O : C H R I S S T R O N G