MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (March 27, 2008) -- The University of Minnesota Medical School has recruited a new vice dean for education to help implement MED 2010, the University’s transformation of medical education.
Lindsey Henson, M.D., Ph.D., with a background in medical education, will fill this new leadership position beginning April 1, 2008. She’s well-known for her boundless energy, passion for excellence in medical education, and experience leading transitions at other medical schools.
“I want to make medical education a different and better experience than when I went to school,” she said. “It’s time to step up and change the learning paradigm in medicine. The University of Minnesota already has started to do that, and I’m excited to be an integral part of the transformation.”
MED 2010 aims to individualize learning, develop mentoring relationships among students and faculty, cultivate professionalism in all students, and measure outcomes through assessments that improve transparency and accountability of all learners.
Henson is well-suited to help implement the new initiative because she has already been involved in two significant transformations of undergraduate medical education leading to the M.D. – one at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and one at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
At Rochester, she was a key leader of the new Double Helix Curriculum. This program, launched in 1999, includes a four-year interweaving of clinical and basic science education and an in-depth assessment of students’ developing professional competence during the second and third years of medical school.
At Case, she led the creation and early implementation of the new Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine program. This program, launched in 2004, is an educational track of the school that uses competency-based portfolios to assess performance of students throughout a curriculum designed to prepare them for careers as physician-investigators.
Through those experiences, Henson provides a unique combination of experience in curriculum reform, competency-based assessment, learning portfolios, and coordination of undergraduate education across different tracks within a single medical school – all critical to the success of MED 2010.
Henson earned her medical degree at the UCLA School of Medicine and her doctorate in nutrition at the UCLA School of Public Health. Before completing her residency in anesthesiology, she served on the faculty in the Department of Medicine at UCLA for five years. She joined the faculty in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Rochester in 1992 and served in positions of increasing responsibility in education, including residency program director and associate dean for graduate medical education, before being named Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education in 2000.
In addition to her role as vice dean at Case, she was a professor of anesthesiology at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She has been professor and chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at University of Louisville School of Medicine since 2005.
The Academic Health Center is home to the University of Minnesota’s six health professional schools and colleges as well as several health-related centers and institutes. Founded in 1851, the University is one of the oldest and largest land grant institutions in the country. The AHC prepares the new health professionals who improve the health of communities, discover and deliver new treatments and cures, and strengthen the health economy.
Contact: Nick Hanson, Academic Health Center, 612-624-2449, hans2853@umn.edu
Allison Campbell Jensen, Medical School, 612-624-9912, aac@umn.edu
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