Dean's Message

We began 2020 with great optimism and sense of excitement for the new decade; the Spring semester was off to a great start and on March 3rd, at the conclusion of a highly successful Block 3 and Block 7, we celebrated CUSOM’s 2019 Student Doctor of the Year award winner, Kara Smith (’20), featured later in this Report. We were also experiencing a sense of growing exuberance as finishing touches were being made to our plans for celebrating the Class of 2020’s extraordinary success in the first single-accreditation residency match.

Then, in early March, everything changed. SARSCoV-2, better known as COVID-19, began to spread with increasing speed throughout the United States, and on March 10, 2020, with 7 confirmed cases in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper issued a State of Emergency. Thanks to advanced collaborative contingency planning efforts, our faculty and staff answered the call to go virtual literally overnight. I am incredibly proud of how each member of our team responded, going above and beyond to help transition the delivery of our curriculum and hosting of important events to virtual platforms. We learned Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate together, we were creative in ways we never thought possible, and we worked tirelessly to find new ways to engage our students and residents and ensure they continued to receive the support and outstanding medical education CUSOM prides itself on.

Not surprisingly, our students were incredibly understanding, flexible and resilient. They were confronted with the challenges of adjusting to a virtual learning environment and the very real impacts of decreased social interaction with their peers, friends, and family. Due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, all in-person graduation ceremonies for the university, including CUSOM’s Class of 2020, had to be canceled. While incredibly disappointing, we were not going to allow the situation to prevent us from celebrating the accomplishments of this amazing group of students, and thanks to the hard work and dedication of so many, we were able to host a unique, personalized, and engaging virtual graduation celebration for the Class of 2020! And while it looked different than the event our students had anticipated for so many years, it was incredibly special and full of ebullience and joy.

Of course, we all hoped by Fall 2020 things would be back to “normal”, but as August approached and the pandemic continued, it became clear that would not be possible. So, once again we charged forward together with confidence and purpose to implement a robust, hybrid model of curriculum delivery, employ innovative methods to improve student learning, host virtual interviews and other important events, and foster engagement and communication with our students and each other. Many of our faculty and staff took on additional projects ranging from the establishment of new collaborative research initiatives and ordering PPE and other critical supplies, to launching several highly successful major media communications campaigns. Our Health Center faculty and staff, along with groups of CUSOM student volunteers, provided testing for the entire university as part of “Operation Safe Return” and are currently assisting with the COVID-19 vaccination efforts. In late spring of 2020, the North Carolina Legislature, through North Carolina House Bill 1043, awarded CUSOM $6 million to support the rural health care workforce’s response to COVID-19. In addition to supporting this workforce response, these funds have enabled CUSOM to pursue a number of projects and initiatives in support of our Mission to care for rural and underserved populations including mass COVID testing in the community and skilled nursing facilities, community educational programming, and the purchase of the Mobile Health and Education Clinics featured later in this report.

The disruption, devastation and loss resulting from the pandemic has been staggering and will continue to touch each of our lives into the foreseeable future. It has also provided us invaluable lessons in resilience, flexibility, and disruptive innovation in the face of uncertainty. More importantly, it has reinvigorated our collective sense of gratitude, grace, kindness, patience, empathy, understanding, and genuine appreciation for the gift of our friends, families, colleagues, students, and communities. 2020 was an unprecedented year but one in which we met each challenge, in the same manner, we have moved forward into 2021 – together, and with great hope and confidence in our purpose, our work, the opportunities ahead, and most importantly, each other. I am so proud to present this 2020 Annual Report to you and hope you enjoy reading, and celebrating, all the amazing things you have accomplished together.

James Powers, DO, Interim Dean and Chief Academic Officer