Pursuing excellence for our students, patients and alumni
As I reflect on my first six months as dean of this great College of Medicine, I am proud to share many of our accomplishments in the past year and celebrate some of the achievements of our students and graduates.
FSU Health continues to move forward with the ongoing construction of the academic health center in Tallahassee and the opening of the ambulatory care facility in Panama City Beach, both collaborative projects with FSU and Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare. Our Graduate Medical Education( GME) sponsorships continue to grow, providing more opportunities for students to complete residency and fellowship training in Florida.
Our alumni— more than 2,200 strong— along with the strength of our academic and research programs illustrate the breadth and depth of our success.
What is success? How do you measure it and what does it look like? These questions, and the answers to them, are always on our minds, but I want to highlight a few of them. We consistently benchmark our progress against key indicators, so we know in which areas we are doing well and where we need to devote extra effort. We owe this constant pursuit of excellence to our students, their future patients and to the profession as a whole.
Many performance measures are quantifiable. For example:
• United States Medical Licensing Examination( USMLE) Step 1 pass rate for the M. D. Class of 2025 was 95 %, while the national average was 92 %.
• USMLE Step 2 pass rate for that class was 99 %, while the national average was 98 %.
• First-time takers of the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination for the Class of 2023 had a pass rate of 95 %, with the national average being 92 %.
• Our School of Physician Assistant Practice recently received Accreditation-Continued status by the Accreditation Review Commission for the Physician Assistant Inc. through September 2032.
• Our Ph. D. program in Biomedical Sciences continues to grow and now has 70 alumni, with an additional 17 graduates through our multi-college Neuroscience doctoral program.
Other things are qualitative in nature but, if you look closely, they are still tied to quantitative measures. For example, we know our college is“ the place to be” and is sought after by students who wish to pursue an education that prepares them for a rewarding career in health care. We know this because over the years, we’ ve seen a steady increase in applications. For the PA class of 2026, we had 1,954 applicants for 60 seats, and for the M. D. class of 2028, there were 7,082 applicants for 120 seats. Clearly, it is very competitive, but we have been successful in admitting students committed to the program and the profession, who go on to practice medicine, teach and conduct cutting-edge research.
I am proud of our College of Medicine— and I hope you are, too, as we each play a role in its ongoing success. Rest assured, we will continue our pursuit of excellence to ensure our students and graduates are well-prepared to practice in their chosen fields in the years ahead.
Warm regards,
Alma B. Littles, M. D. Dean, FSU College of Medicine