Okay, to start, it seems to be your mission to diss our school on here and discourage applicants, which I personally do not understand how that is beneficial to you. It certainly isn't to our school or to applicants who may do very well at VCOM and find themselves discouraged by you. If that makes you happy as you stated, you might want to re-evaluate yourself...
Is our school perfect? No.
Is any school perfect? No.
Are the issues with our school as terrible as you make them seem with all these negative generalizations and statements? No.
To address the things you specifically have mentioned for any applicants/accepted students reading this:
- No, we do not have an affiliated undergraduate institution. Would that be advantageous, sure. Does it affect my every day life? Not slightly. Also, Louisiana is still only a proposed campus at this point so it shouldn't even be a part of the discussion right now.
- We do have an interim anatomy chair. Dr. Paulman is amazing and it is very unfortunate that he will be leaving; however, that has nothing to do with VCOM's stability or credibility and that is all I will say about that (and yes I know the reason, it is just not appropriate/relevant to the discussion, promise).
- In regards to the faculty turnover, some of the statements you made are frankly not true. We certainly do not have a new head of a department every block, unless that suddenly stopped since I started at VCOM (doubtful). Our pathology head has not changed in the "past few months". Professor/staff turnover is part of life. It happens at every school, job, hospital etc. People have lives and they take us different places. I do not feel my class has really "felt" any changes in faculty, at least not yet.
-Having more faculty in the surgery and pathology departments would be helpful. However, we are a DO school with the goal of producing primary care graduates. We also regularly have surgeons lecture with us who are not full-time faculty.
-I find it hard to believe all the faculty you listed openly speak poorly about our institution. Do they have negative things to say at times when things don't go smoothly? Sure, but I highly, highly doubt they would discourage applicants from coming to our school.
- As far as the dean goes, that man is one of the nicest people I have met and although we don't see him much, I am sure he has a lot on his plate. Would it be great for him to seem more involved? Yes. Do I think it would do much? No, because as you have stated repeatedly, faculty's hands are often tied because of Virginia. Same thought with Dr. J.
-Now, to avoid sounding like I am spreading solely froo-froo lovey-dovey BS, the issue with having to go through Virginia is definitely problematic at times. Our school does need more independence as a satellite campus, since we have unique issues and considerations. In my personal experience, I have only encountered this being openly used a reason for an issue that affected my class in one circumstance so far, which was relatively minor since there are other resources (recording OMM labs).
Are there issues with pathology? Well, many will say yes. If student-directed learning is NOT for you, it will be difficult. I personally do not like student-directed learning as much, but I figured out what works for me and I am doing just fine with it. It can definitely be done.
Now to address what I believe to be one of the more important topics being discussed, below is a screenshot of our current college outcomes report of COMLEX level 1 scores. As of this past year, we are right on the national average and matched up with Virginia's average. You guys are smart people and can make your own conclusions with this data. Personally, I am a strong believer that your experience is what you make of it, and personally these were stats that I was comfortable with when I decided to come to VCOM.
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(Not sure what happened with the class of 2018, but since then we have gotten it together as a campus it seems)
IN CONCLUSION: Please, please feel free to reach out with any questions. I will be straight up with you. Any of you who are interviewing or visiting are welcome to meet for coffee or whatever and I will answer any questions honestly and to the best of my knowledge, show you what a pathology SDL entails, show you VCOM TV, whatever.
At the end of the day, I want to be a DOCTOR. VCOM-CC can make that happen, and regardless of the issues that arise from time to time, I am still very happy with my decision to come to VCOM. I wish you all the best of luck wherever you end up!