September 17, 2025
Dear College of Medicine Students:
Student opinion is essential to making the College of Medicine an outstanding place for students to learn and develop into exceptional physicians. We gained critically important feedback when 90% of you completed a survey conducted in late 2024 by the Independent Student Analysis (ISA) task force, in preparation for our upcoming LCME accreditation visit. In response to your input, we spent 2025 working to improve some key areas, holding focus groups and town halls and developing resources.
Interventions have included:
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Mental health support: Ensuring equal access to behavioral health support for all campuses, removing specific restrictions on the number of support sessions
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Research resources: Creating the first version of a searchable database of students’ recent research projects to help serve as a resource for potential projects
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Career advising: Creating a comprehensive career advising platform on Blackboard intended for students and advisors (M1s will receive access during Synthesis week)
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Clarifying mistreatment response: See this page for resources on our mistreatment response process by campus, and refer to the QR code on your badge buddy
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Student Feedback Transparency: Posting tricampus student curricular board evaluations on our Office of Educational Affairs website (note: sign in to Microsoft 365 to view)
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Financial information: Creating an FAQ page about tuition, cost of attendance and financial aid.
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Student space: Providing additional options for storage and study space on and off campus, with further plans for continued enhancement
- Step 1 preparation: Faculty development to create more integrative and higher-order questions for Block quizzes and exams
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Grading transparency: Ensuring clerkships use standard information at all orientations about how you are graded; adding standardized portions to more clerkship assessment frameworks, conducting focus groups and surveys to continue the work
On Friday 9/19, the Student Services and Educational Experiences survey will open to re-assess the areas of key focus, and we hope to meet or exceed the prior 90% participation benchmark. Most classes will have time to complete the survey during an in-class session, and we will have snacks and drawings for FIGS scrubs as incentives. We will submit the results of this survey and the prior 2024 ISA to the LCME for use in their accreditation survey visit, set for April 2026.
Thank you for offering your time and input for our continuous quality improvement cycle!
Best,
Raymond Curry, MD, FACP
Senior Associate Dean for Educational Affairs
Heather Heiman, MD, FACP
Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education
Jessica Hanks, MD
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Peoria
Amanda Osta, MD
Associate Dean for Medical Education, Chicago
Maureen H. Richards, PhD
Assistant Dean of Medical Education & Evaluation, Rockford
Alina Miller, MSHI
Assistant Director, Educational Planning & Accreditation
