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LEADERSHIP Nancy Andrews Chosen to Direct Medical School's MD–PhD ProgramFor Harvard's budding physician–scientists, a year of brewing changes in their education ended with the appointment in December of Nancy Andrews, HMS associate professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital, as the new director for their MD–PhD program. A 1987 graduate of the program, Andrews has already been working to reform it in her previous role as associate director.
A Program ReviewAlmost 25 years after the program graduated its first student in 1974, Dennis Kasper, the executive dean for academic programs in the Faculty of Medicine, initiated a program review in response to a training grant application and subsequent site visit by NIH in 1998.Andrews says her role will first be to implement the recommendations of the review committee that have not yet been realized, and then to work on additional ideas to make the program reflect a distinctive MD–PhD identity. In the past, students and faculty have expressed concern about the program's structure. The students begin with the first two years of medical school, then complete a PhD program, and then resume as third-year medical students. This flip-flopping between two otherwise unconnected programs does not use students' time efficiently enough, taking students almost nine years to graduate. In ongoing work, program faculty are trying to reduce this time to seven years by compressing both the MD and the PhD coursework into the first two years. This way, students do not start out as PhD novices in their third year but already have enough science under their belts to begin thesis research and take their qualifying exams soon, says Andrews. This will entail minor trimming from the standard medical curriculum, but mostly a transfer of lab rotations to the summer and January terms and logistical juggling to integrate medical course schedules with those of the roughly 27 graduate programs across Harvard and MIT that the students will enter. More Molecular MedicineThe program will add an introductory course in molecular medicine in the summer preceding the students' first year. It aims to engender in their minds a sense of what working physician–scientists do right from the get-go. This will help students integrate the diverse aspects of research and medicine into a professional identity as they move through their education."That is something the students in the past did not see until much further along, often until they got to residency or a postdoc," says Andrews, whose combined work as a practicing pediatric hematologist and molecular geneticist of iron metabolism serves as an example. Other changes are nearly complete. For example, a revised advising system now uses mostly MD–PhD faculty who are already closely involved with the students and meet as a group to discuss specific MD–PhD issues. Andrews also meets students individually as well as in small groups on a regular basis. Her future plans include easing the students' transition back to medical school, setting up an endowment for the program, and doubling its size. —Gabrielle Strobel |
Nancy Andrews faces the challenge of integrating the MD–PhD program into a coherent educational experience without losing the diversity of scientific research areas and courses available at Harvard and MIT.