Assistant Dean for Foundational Sciences

Alice L. Walton School of Medicine (AWSOM) is seeking experienced, motivated, and dedicated leaders and educators to participate in the design and delivery of an innovative four-year medical school curriculum that engages medical students in active and novel learning.

Job Description:

About Us

Founded in 2021, Alice L. Walton School of Medicine (AWSOM) is a nonprofit, four-year MD program enhancing traditional medical education with the arts, humanities, and whole health principles. The School’s culture embraces self-care to empower students to care for their own well-being as well as their patients’. The School’s state-of-the-art medical education facility is under construction in Bentonville, Arkansas on the Crystal Bridges campus, home to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Heartland Whole Health Institute. The School has been granted preliminary accreditation status by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education.

What We Seek

We are building a cadre of medical professionals trained in conventional medicine and in whole health, by reimagining medical education. We seek leaders and faculty who are excited by this endeavor. Ideal candidates are committed to our goals of excellence, and to facilitating optimal health for all using a whole health approach.

Faculty and staff members will contribute to the development and rollout of the ARCHES curriculum, which is built on evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning. It includes the following six core elements:

• Art of Healing
• Research
• Clinical
• Health Systems Science
• Embracing Whole Health
• Science of Medicine

All six areas of the curriculum will be interwoven throughout the four-year curriculum.

About The Position

The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine (AWSOM) is looking for an experienced, dynamic, and innovative faculty leader to take on the role of Assistant Dean for Foundational Sciences. This individual will be instrumental in helping design and deliver an innovative, integrated, four-year medical school curriculum that actively engages students through interactive learning methods.

Reporting to the Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs, the Assistant Dean for Foundational Sciences is responsible for the pre-clerkship phase of the ARCHES Curriculum, including curriculum design and integration, student assessment, teaching faculty performance and development, and program evaluation/continuous quality improvement.  The Assistant Dean also will be responsible for appropriate integration of foundational sciences content into the third (clerkships) and fourth (electives and preparation for residency) curricula.

The ARCHES curriculum is built on evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning. It includes the following six core elements:

• Art of Healing: This curriculum component focuses on the human dimensions of care by merging the methodologies used in the humanities and arts with medicine.
• Research: Students learn and complete the basic principles of research and evidence-based medical practice, including how to locate, analyze, synthesize, and apply medical literature effectively.
• Clinical Education: This curricular thread focuses on providing longitudinal clinical skills training and early clinical experiences throughout the first two years of the curriculum. In year three, students complete a diverse array of clinical requirements, and in year four, students explore focused discipline-specific patient care.
• Health Systems Sciences: Students are introduced to current health system structures, processes, and consequences, focusing on developing design skills to address them.
• Embracing Whole Health: Students learn the fundamentals of whole person-centered care, which considers the physical, behavioral, spiritual, and socioeconomic aspects of a person's life experience.
• Science of Medicine: Foundational sciences are featured and integrated into the curriculum in a horizontal and vertical pedagogical model. Students learn the core concepts of the foundational sciences of medicine and how they relate to normal and abnormal processes in the body in an organ-system approach.

All six threads of the curriculum will be interwoven throughout the four-year curriculum.

We are building a workplace and learning climate in which whole health principles are inextricable parts of our culture and practices. All voices are heard and valued, and professional and personal growth are actively supported. While