of Osteopathic Medicine, which will soon have the space and state-of-the-art facilities it deserves. With the increased capacity of the new facility, and the advances in the facility’s specially designed learning spaces and technological components, the quality of education that we will continue to provide to our students will be nothing short of world-class.
Furthermore, by unifying and integrating all of our graduate health professions on the Portland Campus, we will create a health care education campus unlike any other in the region, and will realize our potential as a national leader in interprofessional education (IPE). We will capitalize on the COM students’close proximity and daily interactions with other health professions students to increase cross-professional learning, and enhance team-based competencies. COM, and other health professions students, will benefit from learning spaces in the new facility designed for simulation, standardized patients, and digital health and telemedicine, all of which will complement the Portland campus’ existing simulation resources.
The start of this academic year definitely did not have the same hustle and bustle that incoming medical students bring. It did have a “new normal” feeling, and I am proud of how successful our on-line orientation was, and how well the students navigated their cohorts, rooms, assigned personal protective equipment and the CDC standards put in place.
COVID has definitely changed the way we deliver the pre-clinical curriculum, but with these changes have come new opportunities. We have organized the students into small cohorts, using PPE for all face-to-face clinical teaching and anatomy training. Many medical schools went online for the first semester, including in many cases, clinical training, OMM, physical exam skills, and anatomy course. Using our cohort model, we have been able to maintain all clinical skills training and the year one students are completing a full dissection anatomy course. Thus students have been able to continue in all courses, without the need to postpone or suspend any academic experiences. This approach appears to be working: to date, there have been no interruptions in delivering the curriculum; we have had no exposures occur from on-campus activities; nor has there been any need to quarantine or isolate any of the cohorts. Although this has been a challenging process, we have found opportunities to advance creative initiatives. For example, in the first -year curriculum we have added a session on Fridays which integrates all that week’s material from both the clinical and biomedical science courses. This new learning session, based on a Grand Rounds model, is an hour-long, Zoom-based session on where a clinical case is presented that employs both the basic sciences and clinical skills learning from that week. Guest facilitators, including a trauma surgeon, pediatrician, and
Dear Alumni,
I hope this note finds you and your family well as we navigate through these unprecedented times both professionally and personally. Earlier this month, President Herbert and I informed you of our exciting news, that the University of New England will receive a $30 million grant from the Harold Alfond Foundation, Maine’s largest and most prestigious philanthropic foundation, to support the construction of a new health sciences facility and the relocation of the UNE College of Osteopathic Medicine to the Portland Campus. This grant also facilitates the establishment of UNE’s new Institute for Interprofessional Education and Practice and the acceleration of high-growth undergraduate programs on the Biddeford Campus that are linked to Maine’s key workforce needs.
I cannot emphasize enough what a boon this will be for our College
Letter from the Dean
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