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• NEW: Master of Science: Complementary & Alternative Medicine!

Curricular development at the School of Medicine

Like most major medical schools, Georgetown University School of Medicine is in the process of reforming the curriculum to produce a more integrated program that will enhance the student's problem-solving abilities, and build a strong connection between the basic and clinical medical sciences.

Things that will stay the same:

• The SMP will continue to have our students take a major portion of the M1 basic science curriculum with the medical students.
• Grading will continue to be set against the performance of the medical students (Honors = A, etc).
• The content of first year curriculum will be largely unchanged, despite the change in format.
• The overall medical Physiology content will remain intact in the revised curriculum. The information will be supported with a new graduate course in Clinical Pathophysiology.
• Student support, advising and graduate courses will be comparable to what we currently offer.

Things that will change:

• SMP students will take six medical courses instead of five, and the new courses are now integrated with material from the different disciplines.
• There will be grades from 3 medical courses, instead of two available to medical schools after the fall semester,and all of the medical courses will be completed by mid-March.
• SMP students will now have the relevant Gross Anatomy components (full lectures with faculty facilitated labs and multiple on-line resources, but without cadaveric dissection). This is a new and exciting addition to the SMP curriculum.
• The new medical courses will now include a Biochemistry component.
• Students will not take a medical Neuroscience course, but instead they will take a graduate Introduction to Neurophysiology course in the spring.
• Medical courses will have integrative case-based workshops and small group sessions to solidify concepts. The information base will build over the year.
• Several new graduate courses will be given which will complement the medical courses and provide a strong foundation in the biomedical sciences.

This new program will be in place for the entering class in August, 2008. Regardless of changes, you can be assured of the finest medical and graduate education and support towards your career and academic goals.

New Integrated SMP Curriculum (includes 6 medical courses)

Medical courses are in BOLD, color denotes content & overlap of new curriculum with old coursework (seen to right of new curriculum). The white boxes in the new curriculum indicate new content, primarily gross anatomy, biochemistry and new integrated information. New graduate courses are in blue type.

Course descriptions

Class Schedule/Curriculum (subject to change)

Fall 2008

Spring 2009

Summary of the curricular changes:

• The overall current course content for Cell & Molecular Physiology, Embryology, Microscopic Anatomy, Human Physiology, Endocrinology, will be integrated into the new medical courses.
• The curriculum will ADD medical Gross Anatomy (with innovative non-dissection lab curriculum and prosected cadavers) and medical Biochemistry components (in MCP and MST courses).
• The current Medical Immunology & Microbiology, Nutrition, Biomedical Career Pathways, and Library Research Paper will remain unchanged in the new curriculum.
• The new curriculum will not include the current Intro to Neurobiology and medical Intro to Neuroscience courses, but instead, in addition to the medical Gross Anatomy and Biochemistry, will include three new graduate courses: Physiology Forum, Clinical Pathophysiology and Intro to Neurophysiology, which will further support the physiologic science training available for the MS degree

Grading

Grading for SMP students will remain unchanged: it is done in such a way that grades illustrate competence in medical school courses. This is achieved because the SMP student's grades are based on the medical school grading curve. At Georgetown, medical students are graded on a Honors, High Pass, Pass, Low Pass, Fail grading curve. Physiology students are graded based on the medical school scale. The following grade conversion chart illustrates this.

Daily Schedule

The daily schedule varies throughout the year, depending on the classes that are being taken at any given time. However, in general, students can expect to spend 8-12 hours per week in morning classes and 4 hours per week in afternoon classes. All classes take place between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm. Most of the students spend a majority of the rest of the day studying.