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Anthony Ardolino, M.D.

Associate Dean, Medical Student Affairs

The Medical School Mosaic: Artistry, Form, and Function

The heart of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine is equal parts of vibrant art and function. The carefully crafted UConn mosaic is designed to produce graduate physicians dedicated to superior patient care, service to communities, and scientific inquiry.

Students as the Medium

The success of our school rests on its superior students. The Admissions Committee carefully selects an elite group from more than 2,000 applicants. Students enter with many shared characteristics such as, outstanding academic achievement, intellectual curiosity, and humanism.

While students share academic qualifications, it is their individual and unique qualities that add richness and texture to the University. We address diversity in multiple ways. The Admissions Committee has long embraced the Association of American Medical Colleges guidelines to select students who are widely representative of society; racially, culturally, and socio-economically. We embrace students with scientific backgrounds directly out of college with as much vigor as non-science majors, or those who have taken a more circuitous path to medical school by pursuing other life experiences or secondary degrees.

We are justifiably proud of the quality of the students who choose to matriculate. They are the multivariate gemstones that we use to build our educational product.

The Office of Student Affairs as Caretaker

UConn is dedicated to helping students thrive during medical school. We know that in order to succeed, students must maintain a balance in their academic, emotional, physical, and spiritual lives. The Office of Medical Student Affairs serves a central role in this, in conjunction with a myriad of faculty and staff mentors. We help new students adjust to the personal and professional demands of medical school through proactive sessions with groups and individuals. We have recently instituted a student-mentoring program, pairing third- and fourth-year student volunteers with first year students.

The Office of Medical Student Affairs helps coordinate various essential components of student life including, social, cultural, and sporting events; medical student government and academic committee participation; convocation and graduation ceremonies; and student-run volunteer clinics. For fourth-year students, we write and distribute a summary academic record in support of each student’s application to a residency program. Our contact with students extends beyond four years, as we gather alumni information and feedback from residency directors about how our graduates perform.

We believe that our devotion to nurturing students makes UConn unique. The Office of Student Affairs is committed to helping all 320 students maintain their humanity and unique identities, as they work to discover their ultimate place in the overall design of the medical profession.

Faculty and Students as Co-Artists

Our curriculum fosters active student learning in a collegial setting. We treat students as adult learners, facilitating the transition from passive college students who are often told what to learn, to successful life-long learners who learn what they need to know. The curriculum balances lectures with seminars and Problem-Based Learning. Electives, chosen from a menu of required options, are introduced early, and selective experiences exist throughout the four years.

The first two years have been entirely pass/fail since the school’s inception. The lack of a class rank or GPA promotes better peer and small group learning. The passing standard is high, and students set their personal internal challenge to excel.

One medical school myth holds that first-year students are told to remember peers to their left and right, for one of you will not be present at graduation. UConn revised the myth. We tell students that the person to their right will be their surgeon, and the one on the left their family doctor. This hopefully convinces all students of the obligation to help their peers reach success.

The overall curricular design is thus guided by faculty, and greatly influenced by individual student effort. The emphasis is on maximizing what a student learns, rather than what a faculty member teaches.

Society as the Patron

The medical school exists comfortably within an externally driven context. The admissions process and the curriculum have been indelibly shaped by societal imperatives. The first is the need to train physicians who are both intellectually competent and ethically responsible. Our students clearly acquire the requisite basic science knowledge. UConn consistently outperforms the national average on Step 1 and 2 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. Students learn health law and professional standards along side basic science principles. UConn has embraced the AAMC Professionalism Initiative, and has interwoven formal curriculum to address personal and professional development throughout the four years.

The second contextual directive is that medicine is an applied science. Nearly 100% of physicians become “clinicians”, providing care one-on-one to a patient. UConn students graduate with a sophisticated ability to interact with patients. The Principles of Clinical Medicine course is one of the most extensive of its kind nationally, teaching interviewing, communication, and physical examination skills. Students practice these skills in the Student Continuity Practice, a required 1/2 day per week course in an ambulatory setting beginning in October of the first year. These skills are further honed with standardized patients in the Clinical Skills Assessment Program where students spend numerous afternoons in teaching and evaluation activities. We have long believed in the importance of these simulated experiences. This belief has been validated, as the National Board of Medical Examiners added a clinical skills/standardized patient component to Step 2 of the board exam beginning in 2004.

One of the most important imperatives guiding the school is the need to produce culturally competent physicians who are interested in providing care to under-served populations. UConn students embrace this fully and willingly. There are four student-run clinics, with almost universal participation. These clinics provide care to patients in homeless shelters, congregate facilities, and at migrant farms, where often individuals have profound health care needs. The majority of students extend their volunteer efforts to communities abroad, through elective experiences between the first and second year or during the fourth year.

Our Finished Product

In response to these directives, the school has been created as a metaphorical community courtyard. We are not an abstract or aloof art, to hang high above the people we serve. We rest firmly on the ground, meant to be functional and accessible to all. We are imbedded on firm foundations of academic excellence and service. We value students individually and collectively as unique facets held together by a mortar of mutual respect and peer support. We believe that the process of medical education is enriching. Students begin with unpolished and unlimited potential, and are honed to brilliance through didactic and hands-on experience. Inherent in the phrase "the practice of medicine," this polishing continues long after graduation. UConn is proud of its role in setting each student on to a path of enduring success.