Mission, Vision and Values

We will establish a culture of community that will have a transformative role in the health of the public. We are committed to educating future physicians to embrace responsibility for the health of their communities, and to be activists who advocate at the local, regional, and national level for the best care for patients and their community. Fulfilling this value will be an important metric by which we will demonstrate our success as an institution.

We embrace a culture of broadly defined scholarship and excellence, supported by academic recognition of and investment in our faculty and students. We will establish and nurture this culture by aligning the goals of our school with those of our faculty and students. Our students will learn how to inextricably link their scholarly work with their success as physicians.

We will actively encourage collective, creative energy that, when used wisely, will move our institution forward. We will promote and reward creativity, leadership, and the courage to experiment. We will be intolerant of those who accept the status quo. We will foster a learning climate that intentionally pushes people out of their comfort zone and encourages a willingness to experiment. We will embrace change and cultivate creative tension in the spirit of progress and improvement.

We value as pre-eminent the process and complexity of learning and will organize our school as a learning community that respects and supports the individual learning needs of our students to ensure their success. We value learning over teaching and will continuously seek to develop the skills necessary for our faculty to nurture the learning of our students and the entire community. We will celebrate the involvement of our students as they help shape the future health of our community. Our learning community will be a respectful, inclusive, collaborative environment where students, faculty and University learn and grow together.

We recognize that only through a comprehensive understanding and appreciation of the human condition will we successfully develop and nurture a culture and community of physicians who will care for themselves, their patients, and their colleagues with compassion, tolerance, respect and empathy. This commitment to a curriculum that recognizes, teaches, and rewards humanism enables us to support a culture and environment truly dedicated to healing and promoting health.

We are committed to creating and supporting a diverse and inclusive learning community. We will foster a personal understanding of personal differences so that we may recognize the role of bias and prejudice emanating from these differences. The inclusive learning community, diverse patient care experiences, and supportive reflection will promote the ability to recognize and value the strengths of diversity in our community.

We are committed to fostering the personal transformation of our students into physicians through a thoughtful and appropriate admissions process, careful mentoring program, appropriate reward system, and a curriculum embedded in the student doctor-patient relationship. We believe that the virtues and behaviors that characterize a good doctor will redefine the personal identity of each student. We believe this transformation is a learned, continual process that must be thoughtfully designed, evaluated, and role-modeled to be successful.

“Putting the patient first” is the organizing principle of the school. This value will create a culture of trust that fosters safe, high quality, ethically principled, humanistic care, and we welcome transparency and public evaluation of our standards and outcomes. In all decisions that require prioritization, the patient’s best interest will always be the core principle. Our ability to truly “put patients first” while being just stewards of our society’s resources emanates from this trust.

We are committed to embedding in all of our learning experiences the time and skills necessary to consciously examine, interpret and understand the thoughts and feelings that emanate from intense patient encounters. Through this process of mentored self-reflection and assessment, we ensure the development of a true learning and professional community capable of nurturing the transformation from student to physician.

We will foster the courage and intellectual climate to see beyond “what is”, and we will develop the leaders to take us there. We pledge an unwavering commitment to prepare, adapt and lead our school and community toward achieving the goal of transforming health care for the betterment of humanity.