Dr. Ray Curry Joins Department of Medical Education
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After nearly 11 years leading the medical education programs at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and 27 years in academic leadership overall, Raymond Curry, MD, FACP has stepped down from his role as senior associate dean for educational affairs. He remains a professor of medicine and medical education, and will be based full-time in the Department of Medical Education.
Dr. Curry’s achievements and impact on the College cannot be overstated. After spending over 16 years as vice dean for education at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, he joined UI COM in 2015 to lead the college’s first comprehensive curricular reform in four decades. Under Dr. Curry’s leadership, and in the context of the College’s restructuring to accommodate the Urbana campus’ separately accredited medical school, the College of Medicine swiftly transitioned to a unified and centrally managed curricular model with the Peoria and Rockford campuses evolving from three-year to four-year campuses. The new curriculum was implemented for the 2017 – 2018 academic year — a mere two years after the project was launched.
The Office of Educational Affairs quickly grew from a team of three to the robust central resource it is today, concentrating many administrative and data analytic functions which used to be duplicated at each campus. The office also oversees the College’s continuing education program, where activity has doubled over the past two years, and other educational programs such as the GPPA Medical Scholars Program, joint degree programs, and the Scholarly Concentration Programs for medical students. Dr. Curry has also overseen graduate medical education at the Chicago campus and served as acting associate dean in 2021-22. Other notable advances during Dr. Curry’s time in office include development of the educational components of our new academic partnership with Cook County Health and leadership of the institutional self-study process for the re-accreditation of the MD program in 2018. He will remain the Faculty Accreditation Lead to see us through our upcoming reaccreditation survey visit next April. The tremendous modernization efforts that have transformed UI COM over the last decade are largely due to Dr. Curry’s strategic leadership, and we are grateful that he will be staying the College of Medicine as faculty to witness the fruits of these changes firsthand.
A native of Lexington, KY, Dr. Curry is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He completed residency training in internal medicine at Northwestern University/McGaw Medical Center in 1985 and then joined the faculty in general internal medicine, where he served as a clinician-educator, clerkship director, and ultimately vice dean for a total of 29 years.
As for what’s next, Dr. Curry will enjoy expanding his teaching roles in the MD and GPPA programs and in the graduate programs of the Department of Medical Education and continue his advocacy work for the inclusion and support of health professions students with disabilities. He will also soon be completing a masters degree in medical history from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and further pursuing his scholarly interests in the history of medical education focusing on the Progressive era and on medicine in Chicago — a fitting enterprise for a clinician educator who leaves his own mark on medical education in our city.