Curricular Strategic Planning Committee

The curricular review is led by a team of faculty and staff representing a broad spectrum of focus areas, departments, and student years.  All members are expected to listen and contribute to discussion and decisions openly.  Furthermore, members serve as ambassadors, contributing to two-way communication about the process in unit, department, and college-level meetings. 

Stage 2:  Curricular Strategic Planning Committee

(CSPC or “Planning Committee”)

The Planning Committee is responsible for identifying, collecting, and synthesizing information needed to assess the current Curriculum’s efficacy at meeting objectives recommended by the Steering Committee.  The Planning Committee will further recommend a set of revisions to ameliorate any identified gaps. 

Charge

The AVMA Council on Education requires that each accredited college of veterinary medicine conduct a review of the CVM curriculum no less than every 7 years.  We are due to complete this task. More than simply a required exercise, this review is an opportunity for the College, in consultation with internal and external stakeholder groups and inclusive of larger trends in veterinary practice and educational standards, to evaluate and determine strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, for the following dimensions of our curriculum: 

  1. AVMA CoE Standard 9:   Curriculum, inclusive of content, duration, management, evaluation, and instructional quality and effectiveness.
  2. AVMA CoE Standard 11:  Outcomes assessment, inclusive of NAVLE pass rates, data gathering from recent graduates, and formative and summative evaluation of current students to ensure the attainment of required competencies. 
  3. Student Experience, as defined as
  1. Engagement of students with teaching and learning
  2. Support and mentoring
  3. Wellness and well-being
  4. Climate and culture

   4. Effectiveness and efficiency of educational practices, as defined as

  1. Student achievement of learning outcomes at course and curricular levels
  2. Preparation for subsequent courses and, ultimately, clinical practice
  3. Use of curricular time
  4. Alignment of curriculum, assessments, and outcomes, in concordance with best practices in education. 

Our habit is often to view the curriculum in the context of individual courses–their content, organization, leaders, and effectiveness.  Because of this, this group endeavors to pay particular attention to how the structure, organization, and policies that define the curriculum and the ways that educators and students interact with it.

Goals

  1. (Fall 2019)  Define metrics of success in meeting target outcomes for graduates from the NC State DVM program along the four dimensions above
  2. (Fall 2019)  Identify gaps between current and target outcomes 
  3. (Winter 2020~Spring 2021)  Design solutions

 

Format

The CSPC will meet to discuss each of the following major areas in Fall 2019:

  • Outcomes / Standard 11
  • Content / Standard 9
  • Student Experience
  • Educational Practices
  • Structure & Organization 

 

Each meeting will be three hours long and entail significant preparation by participants.  A “Red Team / Blue Team” format will be employed, such that two presenters are responsible for identifying all the ways in which we successfully attain our target outcomes, and two presenters are responsible for identifying the ways we don’t.  This approach encourages diversity of thought and challenges assumptions.