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 One of the greatest pleasures of leading a first-rate medical school is to watch the transition that occurs from the moment our students walk into orientation to the moment they walk across the stage at hooding. Over the course of four or five years, committed, compassionate, intelligent people are transformed through hard work into committed, compassionate osteopathic physicians.
Often it’s easy to forget the enormous variety of effort that is required to achieve this.
The best students must be recruited, admitted, nurtured, and supported with financial, intellectual and emotional resources. Faculty must plan, implement and evaluate curriculum, staying abreast of the tsunami of new knowledge in medicine and new methods for instruction. Faculty must maintain viable clinical practices to keep their skills honed, to provide settings for education, and to provide much-needed income for the college. Faculty also work to discover new medical knowledge and techniques, seeking to enhance health care for future generations.
Hospitals in our Statewide Campus System partner with us to provide one of the best clinical education systems in the nation, with opportunities for third- and fourth-year students, interns, residents and fellows. Administrators and staff must facilitate all the processes of coordination, communication, relationship-building, funding and personnel.
Literally thousands of individuals, some who are compensated and some who are not, participate in this process, the spectrum of which begins with high school students in our OsteoCHAMPS program and extends through continuing medical education for practicing physicians.
In this issue of Communiqué you’ll find stories of our students at different levels of their predoctoral education. Though, of course, each student’s experience is unique, they represent a process nearly 3,200 people have successfully completed at MSUCOM – that transition into an osteopathic physician.
William D. Strampel, D.O.
Dean
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