On behalf of the Dean, the faculty, and the staff of the MEU, welcome to medical education at the Faculty of Medicine at AUB.
The legacy we have been left by our founders and the generations that followed them is precious. But this legacy of excellence was driven and energized by a persistent quest for higher goals and standards. Our ultimate responsibility as the current custodians of this legacy is to assure not only that standards are maintained, but that they are exceeded, again and again. This becomes a particularly weighty responsibility when we consider the quality of our students. Are we living up to it? Are we doing all we can? Is what we are doing for our students good enough?
The answer to all three questions should always be no. Whatever we are giving our students can and should never be “good enough”. Those who come after us will judge with the sharp vision of hindsight whether what we are doing today was the best we could have done; so will the fruits of our graduates attest in part to how good a job we have performed in preparing them.
Our curriculum has undergone a momentous change as of 2013, a change the impact of which has been palpable in so many ways, some measurable, others not. Overall, students are superior today in their maturity and personal growth as physicians, as well as in their altruistic and socially responsible attitudes and actions, while exceeding their predecessors on knowledge exams. This, in turn, required that our clinical faculty undergo significant “existential” changes in their work habits and their teaching skills, changes that required much energy and time, but we are committed to pursuing their implementation. Our commitment is again driven by our firm belief that our students deserve ever more meaningful and substantial learning experiences with our superb faculty.
As with all changes that take place at medical schools, the fruits are reaped by those who come after. Such is the nature of the pace at which change occurs; change that is carefully and judiciously implemented; change which does not destroy all that was built before; meaningful and truly innovative change. We strive for such change, but the outcomes are never certain; only our fidelity to who we are is certain, and unshakeable.
And it is this that makes our work as faculty so precious and exciting: the opportunity to spend years accompanying the growth and the ‘coming into fullness’, of scores of the most gifted and accomplished young men and women of their generation. Our task is indeed awesome!
Kamal F Badr, MD, ASCI, AAP
Professor of Medicine (Nephrology and Hypertension)
Associate Dean for Medical Education
Associate Chair for Medical Education, Department of Internal Medicine
American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
Professor of Medicine (Adj.), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA