Objectives and Curriculum Subcommittee

Overview and Tasks for 2012-13
The Objectives and Curriculum Subcommittee (OCS) was previously named the Educational Program Objectives Committee (EPOS) and  is one of four standing subcommittees of the Medical Educational Committee (MEC). It elects a chair every three years to represent the subcommittee at the MEC.

Co-Chairs

  • Ron Medzon, MD, Emergency Medicine
  • Gail March, PhD, Office of Medical Education, Academic Affairs

Members

  • John Wiecha, MD, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs
  • Deborah Fournier, Assistant Provost for Institutional Research and Evaluation
  • Anand Devaiah, MD, Associate Program Director for Education; Director, Medical Student Education in Otolaryngology
  • Raveen Basran-Smith, Center for Human Genetics
  • Shi Yang, Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine

Student representatives: MS4 — Sandra Hsu, MS3 — Adil Yunis and Dan Gittings, MS2 — Ujas Parikh and Regan Ferraro, and MS1 — Sagar Patel and Mike Stratton

Charge Stated in BUSM Bylaws 5.c
“The OCS will be appointed by the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in consultation with the MEC and shall meet approximately monthly. The OCS shall be responsible for ensuring that the curriculum reflects the Institutional Learning Objectives, examining and recommending changes to the goals and direction of the curriculum as a whole, and for working directly with faculty to examine and recommend changes to the translation of the more general goals into course specific objectives and the vertical integration of objectives throughout the four years.”

Analyses and Reporting
The Objectives and Curriculum Subcommittee (OCS) serves as one component of the school’s Curriculum Planning, Evaluation and Improvement (CPEI) process. As such, OCS serves to pose and answer curricular-level questions about educational learning objectives that focus on what students are expected to learn. The CurrMIT database is used to support such analyses. Three types of reports are generated by OCS members that include:

  1. Report on Analysis of BUCARES and Course and Clerkship Objectives;
  2. Report on Analysis of Curricular Redundancies; and
  3. Report on Compliance with Educational Standards

The subcommittee will share the findings with the Medical Education Committee, Preclerkship Curriculum Subcommittee, and Clinical Curriculum Subcommittee so as to inform the design and implementation of curricular efforts, as well as instructional delivery and evaluation of student performance. This broad curricular view will provide insights into patterns that can be integrated with more detailed findings from the Clerkship Peer Review Subcommittee that is also assessing clerkships objectives as part of its annual cycle of analyses.

For further information, contact Ron Medzon at Ron.Medzon@bmc.org or Gail March at gmarch@bu.edu.