Reimagining the Future of Clinical Education at Cornell

What is CUCVM doing to keep pace with the rapidly changing world around us? Changes to the veterinary industry, emerging educational technologies, and new discoveries by medical education researchers have sparked widespread interest among our community in reimagining the future of clinical education at Cornell. Teams of clinical educators are working diligently to explore new teaching approaches, conduct pilot projects, and evaluate opportunities to evolve hospital operations to make Cornell a vibrant and rewarding place to teach. Some of the major goals of the curriculum design efforts include:

• Earlier exposure to clinical learning environments
• Increased length of clinical rotations
• Improving clinical knowledge base and clinical reasoning skills before entry into clinical rotations
• Expanded active learning modalities 
• Increased exposure to primary care caseload
• Increase primary care surgical experience
• Flexibility for off-site learning to support diverse career pathways
• Balancing faculty clinical service and teaching responsibilities
• Improving hospital workflows and efficiency

Training future veterinarians is a team sport, and faculty, house officers, and LVTs all play an essential role in the professional development of our veterinary students. From Design Teams to Pilot Testers to Listening Sessions, there are a myriad of ways clinical educators can get involved in improving clinical education at Cornell, and a rapid prototyping approach means substantive changes are happening now. Read more about the changes that were accomplished in 2023.

Curriculum transformation requires teamwork. It’s exciting to see our community come together to think creatively and work collaboratively to improve clinical education. Education is at the heart of what we do at Cornell. Thank you to the members of our community who are working hard to make these goals come to fruition.

Sincerely,

Jodi A. Korich, DVM

Associate Dean for Education