Next fall, Harvard Medical School will launch a major new component of medical education reform: the Scholars in Medicine Program. Starting with the entering class of 2011, every medical student will be required to undertake a scholarly project. According to Gordon Strewler, the program’s director, projects will run the gamut of inquiry, from molecular biology to health care policy and the history of medicine.
The goal is to hone critical thinking and foster curiosity among students while equipping them with the tools for discovery. “Students will not only master knowledge, but also help create it—in the form of a written work, perhaps even a publication,” said Strewler, professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and master of the Cannon Society, one of five medical student societies at HMS.
First-year medical and dental students will identify a mentor and an idea for a summer scholarly project by December and submit a proposal in January. While this effort may evolve into a definitive scholarly project, one that will occupy from four months to a year, students will have the option of pursuing a different project later on, perhaps related to a joint degree.
Details on the Scholars in Medicine Program, and the role of the mentor will soon be announced by HMS Dean Jeffrey Flier, said Strewler. Strewler, a member of the Class of 1971, says his career was shaped by two beloved mentors, John T. Potts, Jr., and Norman Hollenberg, with whom he studied in his fourth year. “Both taught me how to think about science, and John in particular has been a lifelong career mentor.”
“Faculty and students alike can reap tremendous rewards from the bonds that form while working together,” Strewler said. “Were it not for my own mentors, I might never have studied endocrinology or found myself as Master of an HMS Society.”
