Leading Curricular Change

The Harvard Macy Institute Podcast aims to connect our Harvard Macy Institute community and to develop our interest in health professions education topics and literature. Our podcast is hosted by our Program for Educators in the Health Professions course faculty Victoria Brazil, and will feature interviews with health professions education authors and their research papers.

Season 2, Episode 3 features health professions educators Lisa Jane Jacobsen and Jennifer Meka from the Jacobs School of Medicine and biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo, talking about leading curricular change at their institution.

Renewal of medical school curricula is a challenging task for educators, but necessary when communities, pedagogies, and institutional missions change and evolve. Lisa Jane Jacobsen and Jennifer Meka have led a large-scale revision of their medical program at the University of Buffalo. They describe extensive and meaningful community engagement in the process, revision of pedagogies, and designing new learning spaces. Renewal has brought an increasing emphasis on system-based practice and lifelong learning for students. Leading change is a central theme of our conversation, and they generously attribute some of their success to their mentors and work at Harvard Macy Institute.

The discussion is rich with references to guiding principles and influences on their approach – Adam Grant’s ‘Think Again’, Aliki Thomas and André Bussières’ work on knowledge translation, and Simon Sinek’s ‘Together is Better.’

Victoria Brazil, MD (Educators, ’05, Leaders ’07, Assessment ‘10) is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Simulation at Bond University Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine. Her research interests include podcasting and simulation, and she is co-producer of Simulcast - a podcast about health care simulation. Victoria can be followed on Twitter.