Mission Statement and Goals

for the USF COM Committee on Curriculum

The Committee on Curriculum of the USFCOM is a committee representing the Faculty of Medicine, whose membership includes faculty and students. The Committee is mandated by the College of Medicine By-laws(1) and functions in compliance with the standards for medical schools as enumerated by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME)(2).

The Committee serves in an advisory capacity to the Dean of the College of Medicine. The mission of the Committee on Curriculum is to promote excellence in the educational program for the MD degree. The Committee on Curriculum shall:

• review, advise and make recommendations on matters related to undergraduate medical education, including the curriculum and educational goals of the College.
• assume the ongoing responsibility for review and revision of the curriculum both as a whole and for the component parts.
• develop standards for the evaluation of teaching.
• evaluate educational program effectiveness.
• periodically review the objectives, content, and methods of pedagogy utilized for each segment (e.g. course, term, etc.) of the curriculum, and for the curriculum overall.
• monitor the content provided in each discipline in order that objectives for education of a physician are achieved without attempting to present the complete, detailed, systematic body of knowledge in that discipline.
• evaluate for deficiencies and unintended or unnecessary redundancies and make corrections where appropriate.

(1) The Committee on Curriculum shall review, advise and make recommendations on matters related to undergraduate medical education. This Committee shall develop, review and make policy recommendations regarding the curriculum and educational goals of the College and shall develop standards for the evaluation of teaching.

(2) Medical schools must evaluate educational program effectiveness by documenting the achievement of their students and graduates in verifiable and internally consistent ways that show the extent to which institutional and program purposes are met.

The committee responsible for curriculum should give careful attention to the impact on students of the amount of work required. The committee should monitor the content provided in each discipline in order that objectives for education of a physician are achieved without attempting to present the complete, detailed, systematic body of knowledge in that discipline. The objectives, content, and methods of pedagogy utilized for each segment of the curriculum, as well as for the entire curriculum should be subjected to periodic evaluation. Redundancies and deficiencies in the curriculum identified by the evaluations should be corrected.

In the assessment of program quality by multiple measures, schools should consider student evaluations of their courses an teachers, as well as other indicators such as data on student performance, academic progress and program completion rates, acceptance into residency programs, postgraduate performance, licensure of graduates, and emerging measures that may prove to be valid. The results of such evaluations should be used to determine how well schools are fulfilling their objectives and to assess the need for program improvement. Schools also should evaluate the performance of their students and graduates in the framework of national norms of accomplishment. Review and necessary revision of the curriculum is an ongoing faculty responsibility.