As you may have seen, the renovations to the Sterling Hall of Medicine L-Wing lobby and Medical Library entrance were completed in October 2025. The space will be open 24/7 starting Dec. 23 at 5 p.m. After-hours entry is gained by swiping your Yale ID.

The area features a water bottle filling station, sound-dampening carpeting, several soft seating options, power banks, a digital sign, and a computing area with four desktop computers, four bring-your-own device stations, and a printer.

On Oct 28., Dean Latimore, Dean Illuzzi, and David Berg, PhD, met with a group of 15 MD and PA students to begin discussing ways to facilitate and promote constructive dialogue on difficult topics. It was a productive meeting, and we came away with many suggestions for how to move forward.

The group will meet again in December to continue the discussion and explore ways to create a safe and useful space for these types of conversations. 

We continue to support the high-engagement (HE) small-group workshops, offering opportunities for more students in both M1 and M2 classes to participate, and adding the element of high-quality feedback from longitudinal interactions with faculty trained in small group facilitation and feedback.

There were four HE groups for both M1 and M2 in the fall, and there will be four HE groups for M1 students in the spring. Over one-third of the class of 2028 has participated and by the end of the year, over half of the class of 2029 will have participated. We have incorporated student feedback to identify best practices regarding format, group size, co-facilitation, and material into each phase of this pilot.

We also continue to provide high-quality case-based instruction for all students in the pre-clerkship phase, regardless of their participation in the HE pilot.

Dean Moeller is working with course directors to integrate more USMLE-style vignette-based questions into self-assessments and quizzes. We are also piloting large group sessions called "Test-Enhanced Learning" into several of the pre-clerkship courses to stimulate learning through case vignettes with real-time expert feedback from faculty.  

Dr. Wijesekara and a team of faculty and senior students have been coordinating clinical reasoning consultations for all pre-clerkship students. Each student receives individualized one-on-one feedback about clinical reasoning skill development. So far, we have scheduled two sessions for all M2s and will have two-to-three sessions for each M1 student in the spring semester. Student feedback on this has been overwhelmingly positive.

There’s a "Clinical Reasoning Academy (CRA)" for pre-clerkship students on Fridays at noon. The voluntary sessions include a mix of small group case-based workshops on advanced clinical reasoning topics and skills to help you prepare for the wards. 

We will soon be introducing a new Educator Module through Amboss, in which course directors can create individualized weekly quizzes that are linked directly to course material, and deliver these to students. This is part of our effort to respond to student feedback about integrating high-quality "third party" learning tools into the curriculum.

The YSM Educational Technology and Innovation team and the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library collaborated to create Curriculum Search, an AI tool that searches the vast majority of instructional materials used in the MD curriculum. 

We’ve made extensive use of the tool to start a curriculum-wide content review and mapping to NBME/USMLE content. This will help us efficiently yet thoroughly identify how we are meeting our learning objectives, allowing us to reduce unplanned redundancy, create new sessions to fill gaps, and ensure that our teachers and course directors better understand how their material fits into the continuum of the curriculum. 

The Career Advising page describes a variety of ways that the Office of Student Affairs helps you navigate the residency application process.

The Specialty-Specific Advisors/Resources page lists specialty-specific advisors, directors of medical education, and residency program directors, as well as suggested electives, and information about special application processes for each specialty.   

The advisory houses continue to recruit and welcome new faculty, residents, and alumni affiliates. These individuals are eager to meet with you and help you learn about careers in their specialty. Their names are listed on the advisory house webpages. Please reach out! 

We created the How to Find a Faculty Research Mentor webpage which organizes several ways to locate a mentor.  

For first-year students, the Scientific Inquiry Course provides extensive instruction and support for students in their search for a mentor. These offerings include formal didactics and small group workshops. Mentor searches conducted after the clinical years commonly incorporate role models and experiences gained during clinical rotations. 

Dean Moeller is leading a comprehensive curriculum redesign focusing on three key areas: rational design of objectives and content outlines, engaging and innovative pedagogy, and a robust assessment framework.  

The redesign will create a more cohesive and dynamic educational experience, better preparing students for their future careers, and enhancing engagement with faculty, students, and the entire medical education community. 

We have assembled a Curriculum Redesign Steering Committee and three working groups comprising students, faculty, and staff. We aim to provide course directors and faculty with structured guidance about how their material integrates into the curriculum overall. We also aim to provide students with better guidance about the "essential" content and objectives for each course.

We will work to ensure that the pedagogical approaches are appropriately sequenced and match the learning outcomes. We plan to integrate more asynchronous tools, including high-quality "third-party" resources and homegrown tools that leverage evidence-based approaches to learning such as spaced repetition and retrieval practice. Consistent with the Yale System, we plan to provide more frequent opportunities for formative feedback in every phase for all nine YSM competencies. 

The first set of recommendations will be finalized at the Curriculum retreat in February 2026. If you’re interested in learning more or participating in the February retreat, please contact zoe.portman@yale.edu.

We recognized that the clerkship title "Women's and Children's Health" did not capture the full spectrum of health care covered in this block (such as family care, infertility treatment, and health care provided to patients along the gender spectrum). Therefore, we renamed the clerkship the Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology Clerkship to more accurately reflect the clinical and ambulatory training students receive during this 12-week rotation.