James C. Rapley, a second-year student at HMS and president of the school’s Student Council, applauds the move to increase mentoring by faculty.

“We have 8,000 faculty but still we have trouble finding mentors for students,” he says. “It’s important we have mentors that can follow us through the four years.”

Despite the purported benefits of these changes to the third clinical year, Thibault says that it may be the “toughest” recommendation to implement.

“We as medical school faculty don’t control the clinical environment,” he says. “The idea of changes here and the pressures the faculty is under and the fiscal pressures the school is under will make this no easy matter. There are legitimate concerns about the feasibility of this reform.”

HMS projected a five-year deficit of $37 million this past July.

The review also calls for basic science courses to be added in the third clinical year—something currently made difficult by the rotation system. Thibault says that now administrators must decide how to fairly compensate and recognize faculty who will teach the additional courses and mentor students.

“It clearly requires more faculty time to do it, no question about it, we’re not trying to hide that,” he says. “The payoff is that it’s a much better educational experience for the student.”

Despite the administration’s attempts to include students in the review process, Rapley says that some students have felt excluded because the curricular review committee meetings were scheduled during class time.

“[The meetings] didn’t correspond well with our courses,” Rapley says. “If you had a meeting at a certain time as tutorial you couldn’t go...That’s a big concern, a lot of students have felt that we haven’t been involved.”

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.