New Directions emphasizes an increased variety of educational environments that underscore active and personal learning. Distinguishing features of the curriculum are its flexibility and adaptability. New Directions allows students to choose, as early as their first year, from a broad range of elective courses, to elect research activities throughout the curriculum, or to spend five or six years at DMS pursuing simultaneous interests in the natural sciences, the evaluative sciences, engineering, or business. Our curriculum is reviewed and strengthened every year. In the past few years, for example, we have implemented longitudinal curricula across all four years in areas as diverse as medical ethics, genetics, skills for managing patient care, pain management, and women's health.
New material is integrated annually into existing courses.
DMS has implemented a comprehensive and integrated evaluation program, which examines course evaluations, students' clinical skills development, program evaluation, and faculty development. Students are highly encouraged to join the faculty in their commitment to improvement and to these evaluation processes. The first year of the New Directions curriculum introduces students to the basic and fundamental biomedical sciences. In addition, by working with community physicians, students begin to develop clinical skills while exploring issues relating to communication and ethics in the doctor-patient relationship. The second year builds on the first year by exposing students to an integrated, organ-system based multidisciplinary examination of basic sciences, pathophysiology, pharmacology, genetics, pathology, and medicine.