Strategy 2
Provide an outstanding student and trainee experience
UI COM will promote a healthy COM culture that facilitates student and trainee success in a positive and respectful learning environment; promotes physical, financial, mental, and social well-being; and values diversity and inclusion.
Tactics Heading link
2a: Provide effective medical student and trainee advising program(s) and respective academic support systems that are individualized, roadmapped, equitable, and informative; that clarify roles and expectations for learners, advisers, and mentors; and that affect innovative approaches.
2b: In collaboration with the university, provide advising, academic support, and career development programs for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
2c: Ensure access to high-value education: Reduce student debt levels Manage the cost of delivering education Diversify and grow new revenue streams to defray tuition costs.
2d: Work with DEI Strategy group to action the plans to “recruit, matriculate, support, and graduate a diverse body of students who embrace UI COM’s vision and values”.
2e: Build and maintain a positive learning environment that supports health and well-being for all students and trainees.
2f: Build and offer research, scholarship, and discovery opportunities, particularly for medical students who are not in research focused programs (e.g., MSTP, James Scholar).
-
Target Completion Date: Q4 2024; Progress: 70%
Provide effective medical student and trainee advising program(s) and respective academic support systems that are individualized, roadmapped, equitable, and informative; that clarify roles and expectations for learners, advisers, and mentors; and that affect innovative approaches.
Key Activities
- Redesign advising initiatives, including: faculty advising houses, career connectors, specialty faculty liaisons and faculty advisors, webinars, small group advising sessions
- Develop consistent college-wide procedures for academic support services and programs, including:
- Develop handbook(s) for staff
- Create collaborative academic support team with Learning specialists across campuses
- Encourage cooperative Peer Education Programs across campuses
- Integrate UHP, HCOE (academic programs and services) to have unified academic support system
- Develop strategic partnerships with faculty
- Establish common metrics for academic support, e.g.
- Usage of services
- Student outcomes
- Analysis of impact/program evaluation/identify areas for improvement.
- Enhance opportunities for students through Peer Education, e.g.
- Create a non-credit elective course tied to external College Reading and Learning Association tutor training program Certification.
- Educate about teaching skills, pedagogical methods, coaching techniques
- Enhance professional development opportunities for academic support staff, including:
- Continue monthly PD sessions
- Implement appreciative advising framework
- Develop coaching techniques
- Create toolkit for academic support
- Develop marketing strategy/messaging about normalizing academic support with goal of establishing our UI COM ‘brand’ of academic support
- Establish role clarity for all student advisors.
- Develop a longitudinal college-wide plan for career support services and programs, including:
- Develop checkpoints and milestones, year-by-year, for students to make career plans
- Develop tools and guidance for advisors and student
- Bring together our UME and GME representatives to build the college’s UME-GME transition to foster their collaborative discussions to refine career advising/support and establish college metrics.
- Develop an interdisciplinary campus-specific committee focused on helping students prepare for Step 1 and Step 2.
- Develop an optional college-wide resource that faculty can consult for guidance on how to support students for both.
-
Target Completion Date: Q4 2024; Progress: 70%
In collaboration with the university, provide advising, academic support, and career development programs for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Key Activities
- Develop unity among graduate students and postdocs from various departments via various connectivity and central support initiatives
- Create a grad student online community on (i.e., Slack with channels for social groups) tips for first years, etc
- Create a Graduate Student Affairs Office
- Academic Advising – choosing a lab, timelines for thesis project, managing lab disputes; Career Exploration – CV development, applying to postdocs/jobs, navigating authorship, publishing papers, grant writing, thesis writing, oral presentation skills; Develop a Wellness Program (mental health, money management, time management, dealing with failure and the uncertain timelines of graduate school); Surveys and Pulse Checks to gauge annual progress, perceptions, and feedback (CCSE grad student subcommittee)
- Procure funding to support staffing and operations for the office. Administrative staff and support (e.g., to maintain website and online community)
- Develop a Budget for Graduate Student Activities & Support
- Develop and maintain graduate student website
- Implement discipline-based advising system for graduate students, include this as a mechanism for developing peer-to-peer mentoring/support with graduate students from various colleges and programs.
- Administer graduate student annual fall survey for 4th year students
- Develop unity among graduate students and postdocs from various departments via various connectivity and central support initiatives
-
Target Completion Date: Q2 2025; Progress: 65%
Ensure access to high-value education:Reduce student debt levels Manage the cost of delivering education Diversify and grow new revenue streams to defray tuition costs.
Key Activities
- Develop tools to help students manage expectations around cost of attending UI COM and to mitigate the potential debt burden to them, including but not limited to:
- Full transparency regarding the cost of attending our medical school calculation for in-state, out-of-state, DACA, international students and eligibility for loans (Financial Aid Office)
- Full transparency on cost to college of delivering medical education at each campus (working with Educational Affairs, Director of Administrative Operations, to share salient information with students).
- Accurately measure all expected student costs not covered by COM as part of tuition (e.g., test preparation, exam fees, uncovered site fees. Educational Affairs, Director of Administrative Operations, working with Financial Aid Office to incorporate into cost of attending medical school as an average) – and communicate early and candidly with applicants and students on why these costs cannot be part of the cost of attending calculation used by Financial Aid Office.
- Increased and proactive guidance on debt management (Financial Aid Office) and stress management related to debt
- Monitor graduate student cost of education and funding sources (e.g., stipends, grants, scholarships, student)
- Drive cost efficiencies in student affairs portion of educational cost structure: Leverage data from Educational Affairs, Director of Administrative Operations, along with student affairs knowledge and expertise, to complete an analysis of return on investment for student-experience related expenses in order to understand better where we are over-resourced and where we are under-resourced, and (Ongoing, 2023-24) provide proposals for how to more effectively shift our cost structure to be perceived as creating more value for the students.
- Work to better understand the perception and reality of the value of a COM education for medical students at each campus. Identify gaps in experience and opportunities on each campus and work to close those gaps or compensate by leveraging each campus’s specialized resources. Identified gaps in experience and opportunities
- Build consensus around, and improve, COM value proposition via enhanced marketing and communications. Build and enhance student perception of the current and future value of their educational experience beginning in admissions through graduation and beyond.
- Develop tools to help students manage expectations around cost of attending UI COM and to mitigate the potential debt burden to them, including but not limited to:
-
Target Completion Date: Q3 2023; Progress: 100%
Work with DEI Strategy group to action the plans to “recruit, matriculate, support, and graduate a diverse body of students who embrace UI COM’s vision and values”.
Key Activities
- Understand Diversity Council Support Committee charge and other DEI committee charges vis-à-vis broader DEI agenda
- Develop a plan for Admissions and Promotions committees to work with DEI office and DEI Strategy Committee to develop best practices in the recruitment and advancement of URM and disadvantaged students and monitor success on an annual basis based on agreed metrics
- Ensure comprehensive DEI Office action plans with respect to recruitment, messaging, training, and support (especially those being established by the DEI Strategy Committee) fully reflect the needs of the students as identified by this group based on a rigorous assessment of under-represented and disadvantaged student needs
- Continue to monitor student survey data collected by DEI.
-
Target Completion Date: Q4 2024; Progress: 85%
Build and maintain a positive learning environment that supports health and well-being for all students and trainees.
Key Activities
- Encourage and influence the creation of a roadmap of ideal facilities for student/trainee learning by assessing student/trainee needs and gaps
- Influence the structure of student health services to also include mental health, improved communication, and space renovation: diversifying providers; creating 24/7 hotline; integrating mental health messaging in mandatory classes, and facilitating anonymous complaints of biases, mistreatments, and discrimination
- Establish a dedicated-liaison relationship between DEI and student/learning environment (UHP and HCOE); establish dedicated-liaison campus representatives
- Develop training for faculty involving learning environment issues
- Build a communications protocol for Dean’s Office messaging specific to students as target audience to improve internal marketing perception of transparency
- Establish and offer services for graduate students regarding learning environment concerns and publicize services with graduate programs (all campuses).
- Unified wellness programming across campuses for all graduate and/or medical students.
- Long-term plan for mental health screening of students. Have plan in place, if intervention is needed. May be needed for all students not only those struggling academically.
- Policy for mental health days/absences that are excused.
-
Target Completion Date: TBD; Progress: 40%
Key Activities
- Develop and advocate for medical student research programming, infrastructure, and resources
- Encourage and influence funding sources and partnerships to support student research
- Partner with faculty researchers to enhance and expand research opportunities
- Establish metrics to track outcomes and evaluate progress
- Hire New Director
Metrics Heading link
-
Growth in scholarships and endowment
DRAFT ONLY
Values
Current Value: 0 Target Value: 0 -
PhD placement outcomes (e.g., % of trainees in academia)
DRAFT ONLY
Values
Current Value: 0 Target Value: 0 -
Average medical student debt | Priority match rate to top three choices
DRAFT ONLY
Values
Current Value: 0 Target Value: 0