Mission and Goals

To ensure our doctoral candidates receive instruction at the highest level of professional practice, the program maintains rigorous standards for faculty expertise and instructional quality. We ensure compliance with terminal degree requirements and clinical/educational specializations through annual CV audits and performance evaluations. This expert-led environment is monitored via student feedback (End of Course Surveys) and longitudinal data from our alumni, ensuring that our teaching faculty remain current in the evolving medical education and clinical landscapes. 

Professionalism is not just taught; it is cultivated through institutional culture and modeled behavior. We utilize a multi-source feedback model to measure this goal, incorporating a 360-degree evaluation within DMS 900 – where students, peers, and faculty assess professional behavior. By triangulating these results with staff, faculty, and End of Program Surveys, the program ensures that our graduates enter the workforce as ethical leaders who prioritize mentorship and core values in their professional interactions.

The program leverages advanced educational technology to bridge the distance in an online environment and provide a seamless learning experience. We measure the effectiveness of these tools by evaluating both student accessibility and faculty instructional utility. By analyzing the intersection of technical support satisfaction and actual learning enhancement (via End of Course and Faculty Surveys), we proactively update our digital infrastructure to ensure it meets the rigorous demands of a doctoral-level curriculum.

Mastery of disciplinary knowledge is verified through major-specific capstone activities designed to measure critical inquiry and application. For the Medical Education major, this is demonstrated through the DMS 917 Final Project; for the Clinical Medicine major, success is measured via longitudinal pre- and post-curricular clinical growth. The program ensures these measures are fruitful by tracking how graduates use this knowledge to advance professional practice and scholarship as evidenced in our alumni survey reports.

The program prepares graduates for the leadership role that aligns with doctoral education through specific leadership experiences. Clinical Medicine majors demonstrate readiness through their Clinician in Charge role, while Medical Education majors formulate and submit an advanced Leadership Philosophy Statement (DMS 920). We validate our success in this goal by monitoring alumni career trajectory, aiming for over 50% of our graduates to occupy formal leadership roles in their clinics, health systems, or academic programs.

1. Ensure DMS courses are taught by faculty with documented professional degrees and direct professional experience in the subject matter. 
2. Cultivate a culture of professionalism by providing faculty advising and consistently evaluating professional conduct of students and faculty. 
3. Integrate effective and accessible instructional technologies into all courses by regularly evaluating tools, training faculty, and incorporating student feedback.
4. Deliver a rigorous evidence-based curriculum that integrates advanced medical knowledge with critical inquiry through case-based learning and faculty-mentored scholarly projects.
5. Integrate leadership principles and skills development across the curriculum to prepare graduates for leadership roles in healthcare settings.  

1. Ensure courses are taught by faculty possessing documented professional degrees and direct professional experience in medical education and the subject matter.
2. Cultivate a culture of academic professionalism by providing faculty advising and consistently evaluating the professional conduct of students and faculty.
3. Integrate effective and accessible instructional technologies into all courses by regularly evaluating tools, training faculty, and incorporating student feedback.
4. Apply educational theory and curriculum design principles in the development of evidence-based learning activities and demonstrate critical inquiry by producing assessments and scholarly projects that reflect rigorous analysis.
5. Integrate leadership principles and skills development within the curriculum to prepare graduates for leadership roles in academic settings.