Email this pageAdvisory Dean Program
Rochester students arrive from diverse origins to join a profession with shared values: compassion; the understanding care of patients;
learning, investigating, and uncovering the secrets of health and illness. This is an exciting transition, but it may also be challenging. In an effort to ease this transition and to enhance a supportive learning environment, Rochester has incorporated an innovative model of student advising. The advisory dean program at Rochester is designed to enhance the personal and professional development of medical students throughout the course of their undergraduate medical education. This program helps facilitate the many transitions that students face during their medical school tenure, including college student to medical student; classroom to clinic office; medical school to residency. Regular small group and individual meetings with an advisory dean help to foster relationships and ultimately assist in each student’s growth and development in medicine.
First year medical students are introduced to their advisory dean during orientation week. Initial individual meetings allow students and advisory deans to meet and learn about each other. Informal small group lunch meetings are held on a regular basis during the 1st and 2nd years of medical school. These meetings are designed to foster open discussions of special issues facing medical students today including transition to medical school, ethical issues in clinical medicine and biomedical research, and the changing health care environment. One of the goals of these discussions is to help foster professionalism in our students. Additionally, these meetings give students a direct opportunity to express their thoughts about the curriculum and the school. During the 2nd year of medical school, students also have a scheduled individual meeting with their Advisory Dean to review the results of the Comprehensive Assessment and address plans for their curriculum for the final two years of medical school.
Regular meetings are held with third year students on their clinical rotations. These meetings incorporate case-based discussions of ethical dilemmas that students have encountered. Through advisory dean facilitated peer discussions, individual students are able to better understand their responses to clinical situations and how their professional development may be shaped, positively and negatively, by those around them. Career advising continues in both small group and individual settings with the advisory deans.
In the final year of medical school, advisory deans focus their efforts with students on an individual basis. Career advising, including preparation of the Dean’s Letter and individual student residency applications (personal statements and curriculum vitae), and assistance with the transition to residency are the central focus of the advisory dean system.
The ability of advisory deans to get to know students on a personal level throughout their tenure in medical school is invaluable. In fact, the connection of each advisory dean with a small cohort of students (25) in each class has helped to foster a trusting relationship and has enhanced students’ personal and professional development into physicians. The advisory dean system is a model-advising program for undergraduate medical education.
