College of Medicine

I was very pleased to see how many people participated in the recent visit of Linda Pololi here as she came to provide us summary feedback on the “C-Change Survey” that we distributed last Fall. Dr. Pololi had meetings with staff, students, the Council on Diversity and Inclusion, college leadership, and she capped it off with a Grand Rounds for students, staff and faculty on Thursday, 16 November. I met with her several times and we discussed her visit and some potential next steps.

Dr. Pololi was quite happy with the response rate in each of the categories solicited, including faculty, staff, and students. Central campus faculty had a response rate of 84%, campus faculty were 36% with 281 responses received. Staff had 187 members complete the survey with an 82% response rate and students had response rates from 71-83% among the classes. This tremendous response allowed for a rich pool of data and certainly made conclusions much more reliable. I appreciate everyone who participated and took this look at our culture very seriously.

I believe that Linda was very impressed with the overall culture of our medical school and our openness to take a hard look at all of our factors here. We have much to be proud of here and to build upon as the College of Medicine scored well above our peer institutions in the dimensions of “vitality”, “institutional support”, “values alignment”, “ethical / moral distress”, and “respect”. Each of these domains had several questions addressing these areas and our responses were well above her US national mean in previous studies. At the same time we have some work to do in the areas of mentoring (particularly for females), gender equity, and underrepresented minority equity. This led to great discussions at each of Linda's sessions and there were many positive recommendations in the index cards turned in at the end of Grand Rounds.

I realize that many of our present students and staff did not participate in this survey since it was administered over a year ago, but I hope everyone got a chance to see how this “snapshot in time” can help define future initiatives. I look forward to the Council on Diversity and Inclusion and the new Wellness Committee taking the lead on next steps in building on these results to make recommendations for changes ahead. I’ve heard that the staff have already created a working group to look at improvements for their area. I welcome this early active initiative.

Thank you again for your participation and interest in our climate and culture. I will be reporting on a regular basis over the next few months on our progress, an update on the efforts of the Wellness Committee to add in positive ways to our community, and on our preparation for the LCME Self Study and site visit for 2019.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

J. Fogarty, Dean