Minutes for the 10/02/04 UMSC Meeting

 

Present:

Chicago

Peoria

Urbana

Rockford

 

Absent:

Chicago

Peoria

Urbana

Rockford

 

Meeting called to order at 10:20 am.

I.                    Welcome and Introductions

II.                  Approval of the minutes of March 27, 2004

a.        Motion made and seconded to approve minutes; unanimously approved

Chris Miles moves to extend voting privileges to all persons at meeting; motion seconded and unanimously approved.

 

The College-wide UMSC representative structure was explained for new and returning UMSC members.

 

President’s Report—Oveys Mansuri

1)       Research building in Chicago is nearly completed; space allocation process is currently ongoing.

 

2)       Dean of the College of Medicine is reviewed every 5 years.  Dean Moss was reviewed over the course of the past year by an internal and external review committee.

 

The external review committee highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the College of Medicine in context of being at a major health sciences center.

 

                Dean Moss resigned and Dr Flaherty (Professor/Head Department of Psychiatry) appointed Dean.

 

3)       Insurance changes to Campus Care—To be discussed under New Business.

 

Vice-President—Christine Nelsen

 

College Committee Reports

 

CCSP

1) October 11 retreat—Dr. Kashima outlined agenda re: professionalism in students addressed in MSPE for residency application and other areas. Another question broached was equal representation for student representatives to CCSP.

 

2) Due to issues of standardization of clinical experiences and clinical grades there needs to be additional collaboration between CCSP and CCIA.

 

3)  CCSP initiative to improve counseling/guidance to students in academic difficulty.  Suggestions include early intervention and improved identification of local and College-wide student promotion representatives.  A proposal to this effect will be drafted for presentation to CCSP.

 

CCA

Dr. Kashima commented that now all members on CCA review all applications; hopefully this does not slow down offering interviews. Chicago is now doing one-on-one interviews. Quick statistics—applications up 7-8%; number people meeting criteria up 14%--huge number of out-of-state applicants and qualified applicants.

 

CCR

No meetings held last year.  This year’s meeting schedule to be determined.

 

CCSAS

Handle Honors Day and Humanism in Medicine Awards. Dr. Maurer chairs the committee.

 

FEC

ü       Ongoing projects include M4 exchange with King’s College London and application process to select participants

ü       Evaluation for past participants to find out opinions

ü       Working on developing a list of alumni who’ve done foreign exchange in past so that students can contact them for information.

ü       There is an open FEC alternate spot so perhaps an M1 may want to apply for spot.

 

CCIA

 

1)       Discussion on evaluations and the structure of evaluations for clinical rotations. Demarcation currently exists with proficient, advanced, outstanding.  There needs to be greater standardization among clinical experiences and clinical grading.  Evaluators need improved guidelines and directions to provide adequate and constructive evaluation of medical students.

Some other alternatives include:

1.        Strictly pass/fail grading

2.        Second proposal is to justify any grade less than Outstanding with a written explanation—commitment to improvement by dynamic grading methods as opposed to static evaluations.  Balance effectiveness and efficiency of process.

3.        Census at end of year released to students breaking down how many students receive Outstanding/Advanced/Proficient/NR per site per rotation.

 

-Motion by Platina to allow CCIA to bring up proposals mentioned; seconded by Jeehun Kim. Unanimously approved by UMSC.

 

Secretary’s Report—Joanna Kuppy

Please submit committee reports for minutes; please correct contact information for roster purposes.

 

Treasurer—Albert Chan

ü       Currently in the process of reimbursing from before; will cover 3 cars from Chicago and two cars each from Peoria, Rockford, Urbana.

ü       Budget negotiations ongoing with University and College administrators.

 

Historian—Kumarika Banerjee

If students have questions about CampusCare, please reference the website.

 

OSR Report—Dipesh Navsaria and Chris Miles

The last OSR meeting was in Key West, FL last spring. OSR is the student arm of AAMC and they function as ambassadors for students from every school in the country. We are voting today on position of OSR alternate.

OSR meeting reports will be made available on the UMSC-OSR website.

 

Site Reports

Chicago—Platina Coy

  1. Recreation facilities under construction; West Side facilities will open in Jan 2005.
  2. Academic Support Network up and running at Chicago site
  3. Leadership Retreat
  4. Leadership Series—4 workshops per year; half-days; still in planning stages
  5. Alumni Relations—currently, accessibility to alumni is limited and Chicago students are not allowed much access. CMSC has been working with alumni office to improve relations. There have been students invited to this years’ reunion and have been offered opportunity to attend reunion. CMSC was also offered a page in UIC’s biannual alumni magazine.

 

ü       Debate of allowing medical students to have direct access to alumni.

ü       Rockford, Peoria and Urbana all handle their own alumni relations.

 

Results to OSR voting—Harshita (Hershey) Reddy, Peoria, M3

 

Peoria Site Report—Jeehun Kim

1)       Events calendar put up; posting board outside student lounge where different student groups can post their meeting/event information so that events do not conflict—this has been very successful at the Peoria campus.

2)       M2 audio lecture recording—initially were looking to record lectures on video, but decided to try audio lecture recording first and have lectures at library. Purchased MP3 player to record lectures. Is a form of research to see whether this affects student attendance at school. The question is, do other campuses have it and do they want it? 

·         Tamika Alexander (Rockford) says that this is a “hot topic” in Rockford and that they are planning to do something similar on October 5 at Rockford—waiting to see whether this affects class attendance.

·         Yogi Patel (Urbana) points out that this is a great idea but the files need to be secure and of high quality to be of any use.

·         In Chicago, Platina said that this has never been allowed. There are still issues of professors putting lectures on the web—copyright and otherwise—and the Curriculum Committee is not amenable to the idea.

 

Rockford—Jayme Sloan

1. Dr. Lipsky has taken over as the new dean of Rockford.

2. Dr. Fulkerson resigned as well and an interim dean is in place at this time.

3. October 16—White Coat Ceremony and Family Day for M2s.

4. New director of RMED, lots of change in Rockford.

5. UICOM-Rockford, Dartmouth, and University of Rochester were finalists in AAMC Community Service Award; University of Rochester won the award, but it is a great honor to be recognized as a finalist. Committee liked that UIC is a very diverse school and that each school has something different to offer. Rockford is a very community-based site, and the committee was extremely impressed by that.

 

Urbana—Yogi Patel

  1. First meeting on 9/21.
  2. Lots of funding ideas coming out for the coming year.
  3. Lecture hall is still not fixed; money was given last year to fix hall, but it wasn’t fixed as yet.
  4. Online grading system developed by Dr. Williams—have most grades within 5-6 hours, with automatic updates occurring if questions are thrown out etc. This is in great contrast to the process at other sites, especially at Chicago.
  5. Good collaboration between M1s on sharing notes over listservs.
  6. Fundraising ideas for the Urbana site—trying to “beef up” budget to improve events for students. 

 

MSPAC (Rudi Scharnweber, Bruce Geryk)—the largest MD/PhD program in the country. Urbana has a huge program—approx. 120-130 people.

ü       Improved cohesiveness within the MSPAC program.

ü       An incoming student started a Big Sib program—incoming students are matched with upperclassmen—upperclassemen paired with residents—residents paired with attendings. By doing this, they are trying to encourage more social interaction to improve performance and promote cohesiveness. The structure of the program is extremely complicated at this point, so committee is trying to “clean it up” to make it easier to use.

ü       They also are actively encouraged to contact alumni. All information is published and widely available and will give as many contacts as they need at academic medical centers. They don’t seek funds from alumni, but PhD students are “inundated” with alumni contact.

 

Old Business

1) Financial Aid—no new problems; contact Oveys with any issues.

2) Professionalism and Humanism Task Force— PHTF has requested UMSC to devise a structure of student representation and be charged with making appointments to the task force. 

ü       Avni Vora motioned to appoint Kumarika Banerjee to the Humanism and Professionalism Task Force; seconded and unanimously approved.

ü       Joanna Kuppy motioned to appoint two representatives from each site to Humanism and Professionalism Task Force; seconded and approved unanimously.

 

4)UMSC Budget—we have submitted a budget for reimbursement at University-approved rates

 

5) Decompressed Tuition Policy—Report in progress.  Will be presented to Dean Sandlow for consideration.  Urbana has already established their own decompressed tuition policy. 

 

6) Truth in Tuition— The current proposal does not maintain a viable fiscal structure as a long-term solution to medical student tuition at UICOM.  At present UMSC will not make any further decisions or take further action on this matter.

 

New Business

1)       CampusCare Health Insurance—Extensive complaints from all four campuses of UICOM.  Key problems are identified as mental health services, referrals, and access to care at Peoria and Rockford.

a.        Students at Peoria and Rockford are being told to travel to Chicago for secondary care. UMSC is currently addressing these issues and will take it up with the administration and CampusCare.

b.       Question from Tamika Alexander (M2, Rockford)—rep from CampusCare came to Rockford and told them their prescriptions were covered, but only at a pharmacy in Chicago. The students are wondering why the pharmacy is in Chicago and why there is no regional/site pharmacy available to students.

c.        UMSC will present its concerns to the CampusCare administrators and create a mechanism to address student concerns.

 

2)       The Future of UICOM—Change in leadership of the College and potential for further change and restructuring of the medical center and College.  UMSC’s priorities will be to establish a relationship with Dean Flaherty in which student concerns and opinions are actively considered in future decision-making and UMSC is able to support and assist the transition of the new Dean.  The appointment of Dean Flaherty is presently for 2 years.  The administration has assured faculty, staff, and students that disruptions to the operations of the College will be kept to a minimal.

 

3)       Attendance—The attendance policy was reviewed and explained.  It was reiterated every attempt is made to schedule meetings to minimize exam conflicts.  Attendance is considered on a case-by-case basis.

 

4)        Finally, Dean Maurer expressed his appreciation to UMSC and said that he sees growth and an increase involvement and effort being put forth in the council. He will be leaving November 15th, and wanted to thank the council for their work.

 

Motion to adjourn meeting approved and seconded; meeting adjourned at 3:55 pm.