Six affiliation hospitals signed for Central Michigan University College of Medicine announced at first Academic Senate meeting
Several affiliation hospitals were outlined for the College of Medicine Tuesday at the fall semester’s first Academic Senate meeting.
Six hospitals have been signed, and 14 or 15 others are in progress, said University President George Ross.
Dr. Ernest Yoder, dean of the College of Human Medicine, told Senate members and guests of new approaches to the curriculum accommodating students of all learning styles who are in the program.
“The key areas we are looking at while designing the program are integration, individualism, insistence upon excellence and identity formation,” Yoder said.
He said students will take the first two steps of their board exam at the end of their third year, ensuring each student does not move on until they have completed mastery of the subjects.
“During the summer (the presidential transition team’s) six sub-teams wrote their first transition report about the College of Medicine, which I encourage everyone to take a look at online,” Ross said. “We need to get our arms around who we are as an institution before we can determine a vision for the future.”
In addition to the medical college, Ross also spoke about the six goals centering around student success. He hopes to use this year as a baseline so “we can plan, act and move forward,” he said.
“It is going to be a positive year at CMU,” Ross said. “We have increased enrollment with numbers that we did not expect. These numbers are not across the board with other schools, so that shows we’re doing something right.”
The rising enrollment numbers are because of a few factors — the first being a 3.5 percent increase in students returning after their freshman year. This number is typically limited to around 1 percent, but showed a drastic change this year.
Other factors causing an increase in students were a rise in transfers and an increase in minority students, Ross said.
Other Business
Senate Chairman Phil Squattrito said the open position of General Education Director is near completion and will be posted within a week or two. It is a 12-month, full-time position, with first preference given to regular faculty.
The general education director serves as a chief coordinator for CMU’s university program and competency curriculum.
