Good afternoon,
and thank you for joining
us to take part in our
American Canadian School of
Medicine webinar.
While our audience is remote
from our students and our
campus dean sitting to the
right of me today,
we do hope that you treat
this as a conversation.
You answer your questions early and often,
and we can have our students
answer your questions as best as possible.
I think we'll go to our
first slide if we can,
and we'll just introduce
briefly for three slides
who we are as a university.
So we're the American
Canadian School of Medicine.
We're focused on training
our students for
postgraduate residency training,
postgraduate medical
education in the United
States and Canada.
Our students are able to
take the US licensing exams,
the Canadian licensing exams.
They can apply to the NRMP
or National Residency Match
Program in the United States,
and they can apply to CARMS,
the Residency Match Program in Canada.
If you look at our curriculum,
it is certainly informed by
what would be typical for a
modern clinically forward
curriculum in the US or Canada.
Next slide, please.
Regarding our school, we're a nonprofit,
private medical school with
a social mission.
We are in a private public
partnership with the
government of the
Commonwealth of Dominica.
They provide this stunning
33 acre campus that we call home.
It's a purpose built facility,
purpose built for medical education.
And Dominica has a long history
of training medical students
to practice in the US and
Canada through different schools.
I think over 20,000
graduates are practicing in
North America have gone to
different schools in
Dominica over the decades.
And we are new,
we are proud of our newness
I think looking at our early
success here with accreditation,
we have full five-year
internationally recognized accreditation.
That's important as the
rules are changing for
applying for residency and
taking licensing exams in
the United States.
You have to graduate from a
school that has an
accreditor who is WFME recognized.
We can say that proudly.
to every single one of our
students that arrive here on campus.
In fact,
we have never operated as anything
but an accredited medical school.
We made sure that that was
secured even before our
first class this past August in 2023.
In fact,
our four students here today are
all part of that inaugural
class in August of 2023.
They'll be able to tell you
about their experiences now through
through really a little bit
past the midpoint of their
second semester.
They are challenged at the
end of every module by
exams that use National
Board of Medical Examiner questions,
MBME questions.
They know that they are
going to be fully prepared
for the US licensing exams
at the end of your next
year because they are,
that's the only way that we test.
Looking at
really how we're organized educationally.
We work only from small groups.
You will not have more than
10 students that are in
your learning team.
That's the maximum number.
And inside of that learning
team is a practicing physician all day,
every day, right?
And this medical school was
founded by a graduate
of one of the previous
medical schools in Dominica.
He went on to great
accomplishments as an
interventional radiologist,
but he always thought,
Dr. Baggerport thought
about what he would do if
he was to start a medical
school and make it of the finest quality.
And this is the creation.
And he always thought we
should teach clinically.
And I'm going to be asking
our students about that.
What does that actually mean?
I know a lot of places claim that,
but what does that mean to
have a practicing physician
that's leading your
learning team every day?
We have different medical dignitaries,
faculty members,
module directors that fly
down from Ivy League institutions,
leading flagship state,
US state institutions,
leading schools in Canada.
And they're not just here
because they're medical dignitaries,
but they're here because of
how they teach, what they teach,
their philosophy behind
making everything that we
do clinically relevant.
And I think that's something
that should be expected in
medical schools now.
It's perhaps typical,
in the United States and Canada,
less so internationally,
but we think our students
should expect nothing less.
We can go on to the next slide.
We also have clinical,
I should mention your third
and fourth year of your
clinical training will be
in the United States.
Right now our initial
hospital relationships are
all in Los Angeles, California.
There will be others that we
announce over the course of the year,
but we're very excited for
the opportunity there in Los Angeles.
A little bit about American
Canadian School of
Medicine's social mission.
It's not just what is
learned in the classroom or
in the clinical skills labs
or with your standardized patients.
It's also getting out into
the community as health fairs,
as community medicine,
as community immersion.
And this is part of our
academic excellence.
And it's not just what
happens here in school,
it has to be what happens
in the community.
And it's not just about
treating the end state of disease,
it's about prevention.
So much attention is given
to later stages of
development of disease and
the emergencies and
complications that come
from diseases like diabetes.
I know that you've been
screening for diabetes,
screening for hypertension at your
different health fairs,
and that's important.
Our social mission is to
improve healthcare in Dominica.
Our academic mission is to
train great physicians and
set our students on a
pathway to success in
residency and beyond for
their entire careers.
Community engagement and service.
Also, I know that we've started playing
everything from intramural
sports to community cleanup.
We're getting out there and
letting people know that
we're a member of the
community and one that
wants to be active.
And we're very proud of that.
I'll ask Dr. White to speak
to much of that as well,
because he leads much of
that outreach with our community.
At this time, what I'd like to do is,
is introduce our students
and our campus dean,
Dean of Student Affairs, Dr. White.
If you could maybe just give
us a brief background of
where's home and where you
are in the curriculum,
and then we're going to
open up the floor to questions.
So Fatima, do you want to start us off?
Yeah, of course.
So my name is Fatima, and I'm from Miami.
And I'm currently halfway
through my second semester
here at American Community
School of Medicine.
Excellent.
Evan?
Hi, everyone.
My name is Evan.
I am from New Jersey,
and I also am halfway
through my second semester.
Great.
Jackie?
Hi, everyone.
My name is Jackie.
I'm from Keystone, Texas,
and I'm also halfway.
We're almost done with our
first year of medical
school here at Exxon.
Terrific.
Patrick?
Yeah.
My name is Patrick.
I'm from Omaha, Nebraska,
and I'm similar with everyone else.
Second semester here, almost done.
Getting ready to finish up
and go home for the summer.
And then Dr. White, our campus dean,
I'd ask you to introduce
maybe where it's home,
but also you've led so many
initiatives before for
different medical schools,
being their dean, being their campus dean,
leading their centers for
teaching and learning and tutoring,
even institutional
assessment for some schools.
So if you can give us maybe
a little bit about what
excites you about being here.
Thank you, Mr. James.
My name is Stanley White.
I'm the Senior Associate
Dean for Student Affairs
and also Campus Dean here at Axon.
I've been around in medical
education for more years
than I care to remember.
As Mr. James said,
I've worked for a number of
institutions in the US, the UK,
as well as in Dominica,
which is now my home.
I've lived here for the past 14 years.
and been involved in medical
education all of that time.
I was working at another
school previous to this one,
but it only took me about a
minute to decide to join this school.
And that's because I'm
completely sold on the
vision of what the school
is trying to actually achieve.
It's providing you with a
top class medical education,
clinically integrated,
with the basic sciences in
your first two years as
these guys are experiencing,
followed by clinical placements.
It is a school with a social mission,
as Mr James said,
which is particularly close
to my heart because I think
any school working in a
Caribbean island really
needs to be a good corporate citizen,
which means that we
integrate with the local
community as well as help
local health teams in
spreading health education,
doing what these guys have
been doing recently,
going out doing tests for blood pressure,
blood sugar,
giving local community
members health education.
The other part of my role is
that I have oversight of
the academic success of the
students that we take in.
And so as they will tell you,
I'm sure they do have to
take regular NBME composed exams.
And so we have several
committees in the school
which oversees their
progression through their program.
And I actually just came
from one of these meetings
just a few minutes ago
discussing some of the
grades for the exam.
So as part of that process, we have
a supportive network for
students in that if
students are struggling
with a particular area,
one of my other parts of
responsibility is to
supervise what's called the
Student Learning Center,
where we have dedicated
faculty who also work with
the other MD faculty to
help try to tailor the
educational experience and
progress of individual
students as they progress
through their program.
Terrific.
So we have the floor is open
to questions from our online audience.
I guess I'll just get us going with that.
Fatima,
if you can let me know what's been the,
in terms of your experience
so far academically, what has been,
I think,
the most enriching part that
you've found of how we teach?
I mean, this is very different.
You're there,
you've got your embedded physician,
you've got your learning team,
and you're studying, as I understand it,
the night before.
solving cases in the morning,
you have a hands-on
experience in the afternoon.
Is this what was expected?
What has learning been like
in this environment?
Learning has been, honestly,
very great here.
Because in undergrad,
we're so used to big auditoriums,
200 students.
So you lack that attention from faculty.
But here,
being in that small group setting,
discussing actual clinical
cases that some of our
faculty have seen during
their years of experience,
it's very enriching because
we're applying this
knowledge and the material
on a daily basis.
it makes you feel like
you're in a literal
position solving these
cases and you work with your entire group,
you know?
So it's a lot of teamwork
and that's my favorite part about it.
Interesting.
If I could ask Evan, what's,
who's been your,
who's been the most impactful of the,
of the visiting faculty that we have,
right?
The dignitaries that come to campus,
you know,
for each module and with that
teach within their specialty.
What's been the most
impactful for you and why?
Good question.
I would think my interests, I mean,
I think we all kind of have
like an innate interest, but for me,
it's been emergency medicine.
But it's nice because the
visiting faculty has kind
of like turned my interest
to other specialties that I
never thought I actually
would be interested in.
just from meeting them,
learning about what it
actually means to be, for example,
cardiologist and the work-life balance,
what a day-to-day life
looks like from actually
going from your clinical
years to residency to
moving on to an attending.
So I think,
and not to say demographic is
really important because a
cardiologist in New York
City may have a different
type of work-life balance
to a cardiologist somewhere
in maybe the Midwest, Wyoming.
So I think like meeting the
different cardiologists and
meeting the different specialties
has been really great,
even down from the lifestyle,
learning from a fellowship aspect,
and even them reflecting
back on their medical
school years and telling us
certain things that they
wish they could have done differently.
So it's nice to kind of get
that foresight from a seasoned physician.
Thank you.
Jackie, let me ask you a question.
What has been your secret
for success so far, right,
here in medical school?
I know that you're one of
our star students, if I may say so.
So how are you accomplishing this?
It's so different.
You went to Houston Baptist,
if I remember.
So it's different from how
school was taught for
junior undergraduate years.
What enabled you to make that transition?
Well, Houston Baptist University
private university so I was
kind of used to the small
group environment but what
makes this most special is
just that you get to bond
with your professors
knowing that they've been
through the same pathway a
little different from their
background from Russia in
terms of the US but we get
to experience as they
connect with us what we're
learning and apply it based
on what they've seen in
real life it just makes it
even more rewarding it
makes us feel like okay this
will really stay with me
until I start practicing.
I was sat in on your anatomy
lecture yesterday from Dr. King.
And so he had graduated from
the school in Dominica,
went and trained in Georgia,
then Minnesota to become a
colorectal surgeon,
teaches at Wisconsin now.
Very different teaching style there,
seeing he's teaching you, I guess,
anatomy from a surgeon's perspective,
right?
Can you tell me a little bit
about that interaction and
what you take out of those lectures?
Yes.
The way that Dr. King does it is amazing.
He likes to present it first visually,
just from a textbook point of view,
like visualize yourself where it is,
what organ we're talking about.
But then he actually puts it on real life.
He actually pre-records himself.
And he tells us, I speak with students,
with medical students,
And he guides us, like, first learn it,
learn where it is.
Now let's apply it.
And now he's actually,
you can see him doing this.
The surgery videos look very
different from an atlas.
It is not as color-coded and
nice as you see it on the textbook.
But it's just amazing how he
helps us also with mnemonics.
He simplifies, like,
Just like everything comes
from terminology, from Latin.
If you know the root,
you can tell where it's...
You can break down that one
term and you know exactly
what's being referred to.
So it's not just teaching
you anatomy through surgery,
but it's even just some old
fashioned teaching devices
such as mnemonics that have
been... It's good.
Let's see from our... I'm
going to come to Patrick
and let's see from our audience here.
The question is from Ashley
Johnson about transitioning
to medical school as a new environment,
learning experience,
and building connections with students.
Patrick,
can you speak to what the
transition was like and how
you've adjusted?
Absolutely.
The transition is, it was big,
but at the same time made a
lot easier with the people
here with human resources
and everyone kind of helping me adjust,
move everything.
um get my flights set up
make sure my apartment was
all set up and taken care
of and then make sure I
kind of knew where
everything was around here
you know where I could get
groceries where the local
market is um where campus
around campus tour is so
the transition is very
smooth but you just need to
know it's different than
the u.s you're in a different
Country and you kind of have
to adjust to that.
But once you do adjust to it,
it's a fun time The people
here are fantastic.
All the locals are very
friendly And every single
event that we have outdoors
at the market the one we
just did during World
Health Day just talking to
the locals in itself was
very rewarding in itself
and Kind of getting there, you know,
maybe the food I eat back
home is different than what
they eat here so kind of
even just getting recipes and
you know, different ways.
It's very enriching and it's
very different than you
would ever experience
anywhere else at a different school,
any other environment.
So it's a lot of fun.
How would you say the school
did in terms of preparing
you all for landing in
Dominica and coming to Axon?
Did you get all the support
and information you needed
before you came?
How did we do in things like that?
I think that there is pretty
much every information,
maybe like small details
that you'd always just forget about.
But I mean, other than that,
everything was very well
set up and kind of book list.
Here's what you need to bring.
Don't forget your passport.
Other, you know, everything,
the most important stuff
was all there for you.
And I think it went very smoothly for me.
So I think for me, it was great.
I mean, I came down with family.
I even brought my dog.
So I've been coming down and
actually working out the
health certificate for my
dog and working out
everything else that I
needed to actually get a
visa and make sure my wife was covered.
It was like fantastic.
I always try to do my horn
when it comes to those things,
but Amanda was great in
admissions and she helped
me get everything settled.
So by the time I actually land,
a vet was there, met me at the airport.
I had arrived from the
airport all the way down to
the university and
everything's been set up
That can be quite a complication,
but it sounds like our team
was able to get you through
that pretty easily.
That's good.
Very good to hear.
We have several questions
around prerequisites for
applying and obtaining an
admission to American
Canadian School of Medicine.
Typical medical school prerequisites,
they're actually listed out
in detail under the
admissions part of our website.
I'll actually ask if
Elliot, who's supporting us online here,
can post a direct link to
that so everybody can review that.
But there's a follow up
question about having a bachelor's
and pharmacy,
that should certainly cover
all of the prerequisites.
Typical prerequisites here are biology,
chemistry.
Yes,
you need an MCAT for direct admission
to first semester.
We are actually developing
or have developed a
preparatory program for
students that do not have
an MCAT where they can prepare,
have extra reinforcement,
prior to completing the prep
program successfully and
entering into the medical school.
So we have the ability for
students to come in directly,
and then depending on what
the faculty admissions committee decides,
there can be the additional
option of that prep program.
The question about having a
background in technology,
animal nutrition, biotechnology.
Again,
the typical classes that you would
take within those programs
should satisfy our
requirements at American
Canadian School of Medicine.
I see that we've posted the
link for everybody with
their prerequisites,
but you can go through and
look at class by class
each of the prerequisites.
Our faculty admissions
committee does have some
discretion there.
They're able to sometimes
substitute an advanced
course if you test it out
of your freshman biology course,
but you have
courses in microbiology and
biochemistry it's it's at
their discretion say well
you took the advanced
course we're going to have
that count for the for that
general biology course
instead you've taken some
obviously something that's
more senior so they're
they're a reasonable group
our faculty are looking to
support you uh they're
looking for a reason that
you can be great and a
reason to extend
opportunity to you not for
a reason to um to be overly
bureaucratic there
Let's see if we have another
question that's come through.
A question about someone
with pharmaceutical
experience in terms of
their educational background.
We love pharmacists,
so it's actually pretty
common to find folks with
doctorates in pharmacy even
coming back and earning their MD.
You see physician assistants,
you see nurses.
uh does anybody want to
comment on their their
background so not everybody
here went straight into
medical school after
undergraduate right some
work history and you know
so maybe if you could just
we'll start with you
patrick and work this way
but can you just comment on
you know what was your path
to get getting here it's
not always a straight I
graduate in may I go to med
school in august what
happened with uh with your
with your journey so I graduated and then
It took me a gap year.
So I took a gap year.
I worked as a pharmacy tech.
I studied for the MCAT.
And so I basically just made
sure all of as many of my, you know,
volunteering hours, clinical hours,
everything I could that, you know,
schools would require.
I just tried to fill up as
many as those I could get
some experience and yeah.
And then just get ready for
applications and apply.
Great.
Anybody else want to comment
on their path to school or
work background?
Yeah, sure.
I'm one of the older students,
so I'm non-traditional.
And for me, my background,
I did both my bachelor's at Rutgers.
I did psychology,
and I did cognitive neuroscience.
And then I went on to do
both my master's at Ohio State,
and I did some research.
And I wrote a thesis.
I guess for me,
I took some time off to
kind of focus what I wanted to do.
And then I was studying to
take the MCAT and take
everything for admissions here.
And then I knew medical
school was always the goal,
but I kind of just want to
try to up my stats the most
I can in my meantime.
So that was kind of just my route.
It's been a journey.
It's been a long one.
There's a question on age
restriction for admission,
but I just wondered if you
could go back to the previous question,
which referred to Canada.
I don't know if it's from Fabulous.
Do we have affiliated
hospitals in Canada for
clinical rotations?
We do not have affiliated
hospitals in Canada yet.
We are certainly...
are actively involved in
outreach in Canada.
We'll certainly update everybody on that,
but that is ultimately the
goal is to have hospital
affiliations in Canada.
I think people are
interested in not just
elective rotations in Canada,
but also for rotations as well.
And so we're looking at both
third and fourth year and
developing relationships.
I can tell you that in
Canada we started a
relationship with Mount
Royal University where
their faculty actually work
with our faculty to help
select excellent students
who would benefit from our
medical education.
And so we actually have
started institution to
institution outreach and
started programs in terms of
finding the right students
to be part of our community here.
That's one type of outreach.
I can just tell you that
we've begun our outreach in
terms of clinicals,
but we do not have an agreement yet.
Fabulous's second question
is about MCAT and the fact
that Fabulous is in Africa,
so were there no MCAT centres?
How are we going to deal
with applications from
Yeah,
we do require the MCAT for direct
admission.
That being said,
we do have now the prep
program that we're able to
offer where if a student
does not have an MCAT,
they're able to
successfully complete the
prep program that is, I guess,
also a pathway for admission.
So do you wish to talk to
the prep program?
I guess we're starting with
the August semester.
all being well will begin in August.
And as Mr. James says,
it's for students who may
not be ready to enter
directly into the medical program,
but it gives them about 16,
17 weeks of preparation for
our first semester teaching.
So it's a sort of a first
semester of medical school
stretched out to take it a more,
I shan't say leisurely pace,
but slightly more spaced out
pace which will also
inculcate some study skills
also to help you survive
the onslaught that you get
in semester one.
How would you say on that point,
what was it like for you
guys that first day or so of teaching?
Was it sort of overwhelming?
It comes thick and fast.
Yeah,
I mean week one point three You know
a lot of things we've seen
in undergrad like the cell
the mitochondria and then
Week two you know you're
slowly getting into rhythm
because the weeks are
piling up now And then as
soon as you're halfway through your life.
Oh my god.
That's a lot of information
But it definitely it works out together
And so our first module is
Foundations of Medicine, which is,
I guess, one of the workings of the cell.
And then after that,
you go to Attack and Defense,
which I guess you could say
is analogous to some of the
microbiology and immunology backing.
And after that,
it's mostly just musculoskeletal.
And then organ really goes
to the organ system after that.
So the details of the
preparatory course should
be online on our website.
this week, or should it have already?
I'm not sure.
I didn't check,
but details of the
preparation course should
be on our website in the next few days.
We're going to make a big
announcement about the prep course.
We're telling you some of this.
We're getting an exclusive
spoiler on that.
But I was going to say,
But basically, in the prep course,
you're getting the content
of that seven weeks of
foundations of medicine
that stretched out.
Then you're getting the
attack and defense.
And so you successfully pass that.
You go into first semester.
you're actually kind of
getting those modules again,
maybe a little bit faster,
but it's your second time
through it and it should
really prepare people to
start on a great footing
for medical school.
Sorry to interrupt, Dr. White.
The third question was would
an MBA without a bachelor's
degree be accepted?
I think that for exceptions like that,
we'd have to talk to the faculty.
So there are cases where, say,
for somebody who has a PharmD now,
they often don't have the
bachelor's degree, right?
That's a pretty easy one.
The faculty would say, well,
you don't have a bachelor's,
but you have a doctorate in pharmacy.
Of course,
that's more than satisfies the
bachelor requirement.
I guess it should really be
bachelor or higher.
But with a master's in
something like an MBA,
I think they'd have to look
at your prerequisite courses.
If you had this advanced degree,
this graduate degree,
and you had the right preparatory courses,
I imagine the faculty would
be okay with that.
But again,
I'm not on the faculty
admissions committee.
I'm the president of the university.
They're an independent group,
and that is one thing I
should note about our university.
As a nonprofit,
we have an independent
board of trustees that
govern the university.
You should look them up online.
They're really an amazing group,
medical dignitaries from
throughout the U.S., Canada,
leaders within the Caribbean,
as well as really it's a
terrific governing body.
Who else is independent?
The faculty admissions
committee is independent.
They make the decisions in
regards to admission,
but then also these kinds
of exceptions in terms of prerequisites.
Again,
that's fully on the shoulders of the
faculty.
So my advice would be to apply, right?
We're not going to get that
reading from the faculty
unless you apply.
So I'd apply.
Let's get your application
in front of them.
Hopefully they'll be able to
invite you for an interview.
If there is something they
feel is missing from a
prerequisite standpoint,
they will let you know.
It's not gonna be a secret, right?
So you're gonna be contacted by admission.
They're gonna say,
everything looks in order.
We're excited to have you as an applicant.
If there is some,
I don't wanna say deficiency,
but if there's something missing there,
they feel that you need
that one extra class,
whatever that piece is,
they will directly let you know.
So again,
let's apply and get you in front
of the faculty and have them respond.
Thanks for those three great questions.
Age maximum in medical school.
Oh, we don't really, well,
we don't consider age as
part of the admissions process.
So I think all of our
students have been in there
20s and 30s so far.
But again,
if we had had a pharmacist or
somebody that's a great
student that's been off and
doing other things for a few decades,
we would not,
it just wouldn't be part of
the admissions decisions
about the candidate, who they are.
It's about their background,
their preparation,
the reasons that they want
to be in medicine,
why they think they can be a great doctor,
be a great student with us.
And that's the judgment of the faculty.
When you go to the
website that's provided
looking at our requirements
for admission.
Nowhere there will you see age.
Do you have connection with
local hospitals for
students to volunteer or
practice classroom skills?
What we've done is we've
started working initially
with the health fairs and
through the development of
our community medicine module
Dominica actually has a
large teaching hospital, about 300 beds.
There's a secondary hospital, about 80.
There's a series of clinics
here in the community as well.
So that is the intent that
we will have cooperation
there in the upper
semesters with the local
sites for healthcare.
Again,
we are in a private public
partnership with the
government of Dominica.
Our faculty members are in
various stages of licensing
here in Dominica.
We've brought quite a number
of specialists to Dominica.
This is seen as a great
thing here locally in terms
of what we can do to help
support healthcare in
Dominica and Peru Healthcare.
So I think you'll see that
beyond some of the
volunteer work that we've been doing,
our role in these hospitals
is only gonna expand as we
get into third and fourth semester.
Dr. White,
do you want to speak to some of
the standardized patient
programs that we have and what we do?
Yeah,
so in addition to what Mr. James said,
we actually are teaching
clinical skills on campus
by the use of so-called
standardized patients.
These are individuals that
are trained to present
themselves with symptoms of a condition.
And we also have a simulation lab.
I'd like to just reinforce
Mr. James's comments about
our partnership
in terms of the government
and the local health teams,
because it's not just at the hospitals.
We also partner with local
health teams to do health fairs,
as we've said.
So I wondered if the
students would like to
comment on what was the
value of the experience of
the health fairs you've done so far,
and also how it might be
worth telling people online
what your experience of the
standardized patients and
simulation classes have been.
Who wants to?
I can take it.
Absolutely.
Starting out,
so everyone will have to go
through what we call
introduction to clinical medicine,
which is, as they were talking about,
it's your preparation to
learn your clinical skills.
So that's when we do our
standardized patients.
That's where we go to learn blood pressure,
how to auscultate, how to palpate,
anything that you're going
to have to then do for your physical exam,
history taking, anything like that.
So you'll learn those in the classes.
And then, obviously,
the school wants us to apply it.
What we did this last week,
a couple weeks ago,
was we went down to the
local farmer's market.
We set up some massive tents.
We took blood pressure, sugar levels,
and then we just also did
some surveys so I can see
kind of the health and
well-being of the local
people and kind of
therefore we can see how we
can improve for the future as well.
One thing to point out about
this experience with the health fairs,
we integrate them into our
curriculum in a way because
students who are going to
be involved in the health
fairs have been
instrumental in producing a
lot of health information,
brochures and pamphlets
that we give out to people
in the community on these health days.
Who wants to say something
about your experience of
those health days?
Because you've only done two so far.
There'll be plenty more coming out,
but how do you reflect on
the two we've done so far?
So we have done two and they
have been very,
they were both very
different from each other
because diabetes day was very specific.
So a lot of the patients,
a lot of the local
community members we saw, you know,
they're specifically diabetic.
But World Health Day itself, you know,
it actually brought out the
entire community.
And especially Saturdays,
it's a very busy day in the market.
And it was really nice,
because we actually had
full conversations.
And we did histories.
We got to know them personally.
And some of them were so sweet,
they would bring us fruits
as a thank you present.
And it was actually very enriching,
because as future physicians,
we want to raise awareness
where we are and continue to promote
So it was very fun, very fun events.
I think we had a question
about the schedule during
the year for medical school.
Do you want to talk about your,
so you went from first
semester to second semester,
so you had one break.
You have another break
coming up that you probably
have marked on the calendar.
Do you want to tell us about that?
about how the breaks work
and then what you're
looking forward to maybe
about the next one.
So typically how our day
starts is we have a lecture
from 8 to 9 or 9.30,
and it's usually from a
faculty visiting from one
of the major Ivy Leagues.
That could be recently we
had them from Harvard School of Medicine.
We had some from Pennsylvania, from Yale,
from Wyoming.
from California, from Florida,
like we've got an amazing
like Ivy League state
schools and most of them
are all like program
directors and that's
amazing in and of itself
that we get to experience
this coming from them.
So yeah, so it's like a one hour,
one hour and a half,
eight to nine at the beginning.
Then we have like a 15
minute break and then we
gather into a small group discussions.
And that's when like our classroom,
like our curriculum is
split the classroom.
So you get to learn,
they give you a pre-work, a set of videos,
set of like articles that
you get to read in
preparation for the next week.
And then we actually gather
in our small groups with
our professors and get to
discuss real life cases.
So you may hear from a U.S.
program director for an hour
in the morning,
and then you may have a
discussion with them.
Then you're into your small
group with your kind of
your full-time practicing
physician that's part of your group.
You may have your afternoon
experience that's hands-on,
and that's your typical day schedule.
In terms of the semester schedule,
you have a December, early January break,
and then I guess the next
one's coming up in June and July.
But we have two semesters a year.
And they're pretty long semesters.
I think 18 weeks would be typical.
Some are shorter and longer.
But we provide a lot of instruction.
So it's, you know,
I think we're doing probably maybe more,
not less,
in terms of the number of weeks
in some schools.
But I think that's good.
In terms of coming up this June,
is anybody staying here?
Is everybody going home?
Uh, what's your,
what's the first thing that
you're doing when you're
going back to the U S well,
I guess I'll take this one.
Um, uh, yeah,
I gotta have everything there with me.
So my, like my, my family's here.
Um,
but I haven't gone back home to the U S
yet.
Wow.
Yeah.
I've been taking advantage, um,
of this traveling.
So for the last break,
I've gone to Europe and this break,
I'm also gonna go back to
Europe and probably visit Morocco.
Amazing.
It's a little different.
Try something different while I'm here.
That's incredible.
One thing I wanted to follow
up on what Jackie just said
about a lot of the pre-work
and the flipped classroom approach.
We provide all those
resources through a
learning platform as well
as several different online resources.
How would you describe this
technological backup to
your learning experience
that you're going through at the moment?
I mean we're actually
sitting in our anatomy lab
and don't be considered
online we don't have any categories here.
What's your experience with
the technological backup to
the education you're
getting any particular high
points like virtual reality
and that's me anything like that.
I feel like the technology
aspect is a great aspect
and it's honestly very important.
And one of our visiting
faculties that's actually here right now,
he was speaking with us
today about cadavers and he's like,
you guys don't need that
anymore because you have
the virtual glasses, you know,
and we have the VR headsets here.
So it's honestly like as
good as it can get.
And
You know, we were talking about, like,
Apple and AI and all this stuff,
so it's actually really
good that the school, like,
emphasizes the importance
of technology because as the, you know,
as the world goes on,
it's just going to grow,
and we need to move with it
and not fall behind, so.
I noticed in Dr. King's anatomy experience,
I'll call it.
It's like, it's lab, it's lecture,
it's interaction, but...
So surgery videos, CT images,
ultrasound images.
Interestingly,
I understand that you're
able to do ultrasound here
in this lab and actually
practice this with each other,
but find your different structures.
I listened to Dr. King
speaking about how
important that was for
different aspects of the surgery practice,
if he wants an answer right
now and not have something
go off the imaging.
But has there been anything
impactful about the hands-on nature of
of finding those structures
in the lab just using an
ultrasound as opposed to a dissection.
Well,
it's also just the aspect of that is
what you're going to use.
I mean,
being able to actually hold the
ultrasound yourself, get the experience,
finding, okay,
where is the valve in the heart?
Is it actually,
then you know if it's pumping or not,
whether the lungs are inflated.
It's very practical stuff
that you will use and that
you can use because
ultrasound is very applicable anywhere.
And same with, you know, CT.
And as every faculty has stated, it's,
you know,
cadavers are different than a
live patient.
And so what he was focusing
a lot on was here's your surgery.
And as we go through,
as Dr. King showed us the
surgery that he's done, he's like,
let me show you each
structure that we just talked about.
Here's what it looks like in real life.
That way,
when you go into your surgical rotation,
you know,
you will actually know and be able to say,
okay, I saw this before rather than,
This is not what I remember
from the textbook.
I observed from quizzing the class on,
if I remove this,
what's the consequence to the body?
What other system gets impacted?
What workaround surgically
could you affect?
And so seeing that,
I meant to stop by your
class for just a couple of minutes.
I spent an hour here because
it was hard to pull myself away.
But it was a very dynamic.
uh way of teaching so yeah
we actually were pretty
lucky um last week dr
abiola came up to us and
and actually was able to
show us what the actual
ovarian cyst looks like
through the ultrasound wow
yeah so we were able to
actually view it in like
live performance so that
was actually good right and
then we had dr giliano come
down and he runs the
fellowship in uh I believe
university of florida yeah
and he actually showed us how to actually
for in their emergency department,
which is nice.
That's great.
It's good to know that
they're teaching you just
the same as they are at
their home institution.
And I mean,
it's nice to have that
comparability and that norming, I think,
when you look at having
faculty come from elsewhere as well.
Absolutely.
And I think the other
important point about this
is that you're getting
these very directly
clinically relevant
material so early in your
medical school education.
which is quite a contrast to
the way many schools teach.
So I think a clinical
integration part of the
curriculum is the major
strength of what we're doing.
I think so.
You're not learning it by rote.
You're learning it because, you know,
clinically, why I need to know this.
I actually noticed that a
lot of the visiting faculty,
they always comment on how, oh,
you're already doing that.
There's like, you know,
you cover some of that
stuff later on in clinical rotations.
But they merge it to the basic sciences.
That's great.
Let's see if we have another question.
Oh yeah,
we do not have an application fee.
You can apply and you'll get
the full vetting from our
faculty without a fee.
You'll get feedback.
I mean hopefully it's a
successful journey through
the admissions process.
It's a quick process that
students can apply,
even interview the same week.
find out their decision from
the faculty admissions
committee within several days.
It's a rigorous process,
but it's not unduly long by any means.
You can take any of your
common apps from North America,
such as the student copy of your MCAS,
of any of the different
application services,
the Texas application,
the Ontario application.
You can send in your student copy of that,
and then that will serve as
your application.
We will need official
documents from your institutions.
We'll get the official score reports.
But we're not going to wait
two or three months for all
that to filter in and come
to the university and then
consider your application.
The faculty are going to
work with the students
submitted documents at the
time of admission.
And then we let the
registrar work with
admissions and your
previous institutions to
get the official documents
by the time that you start
your medical school first
semester with us.
Funding opportunities for
scholarships for international students.
What are the requirements to qualify?
Do you want to say anything
about scholarships for
international students?
Right now,
we do have a scholarship program
in place for U.S.
students.
Actually,
we are working on being able to
extend that to Canada.
We'll certainly make an
announcement when we feel
we're able to do that.
We've had our students actually,
some of our Canadian students,
I know they've begun their
provincial loan applications.
We have a financial aid
office that can walk
Canadian students through
applying to Canadian banks
for their professional lines of credit.
So our financial aid office
is led by Jane Sutter and
you'll be able to contact
her through our website and
Jane can work with
everybody's individual situation.
We strive to have all of our,
to have any qualified student,
we want them to be able to earn their MD.
And so our financial aid
department really does work
with our students to make
sure that we can find funding.
Understood there's,
different exceptions and it
may be more difficult for
some students and others to
find their funding,
but that's why our
financial aid department is
here is to help you and
help find that pathway.
The university has given
significant scholarships
and grants to make the
education of students
financially possible here.
It's hard to say for the
individual cases or
exceptional cases how that would work.
But what I can tell you is that's why Jane,
that's why our financial
aid department is here,
is to help students with
exactly those types of questions.
We do have students actually attending,
not just from North America,
but also from Europe, from Africa.
So again,
every person's situation is
individual and different.
But even in our initial class here,
we've been able to make
enrollment possible for
students and not just from North America.
I should also mention we
have students from Dominica
as well that have been on
full scholarship here with
the university.
So I think we're up to maybe
a half dozen countries
represented in terms of
where our students have come from so far.
So this question is about the prep course,
and as we said,
the details of that will be
on our website with all of
the information about applying,
criteria for it in the next
couple of days.
It says,
what is the timeline for an
interview call considering
August admission?
Well, if you apply this week,
I think a lot of, so apply this week,
give us as much information as you have.
there's no reason that you
will receive a call from
the admissions department
within 24 hours.
And if everything's there in order,
really within 24 hours of that,
you'll receive an interview notification.
It can take some days if there's, again,
depending on the
information that comes in
with the application.
But we endeavor that
somebody could apply on a Monday
and be invited for an
interview later that week.
And then whether you're able
to schedule for that week
or the following week is
usually more of a matter of
your availability and then
the schedule of Dr. Velazquez,
who's our expert interviewer.
But we endeavor to have
people interviewed within
two weeks of application.
Once you've been interviewed,
it takes no more than one week
for the faculty admissions
committee to make a decision.
They typically meet twice per week.
So usually you're not more
than three or four days
away from a decision once
you've interviewed.
So in terms of, could I apply,
what's today?
Today's Tuesday, right?
So tomorrow's Wednesday, May 1st.
If you've applied tonight on April 30th,
there's no reason by,
so let's say May 7th,
that you haven't heard back
from us regarding an interview.
There's no reason you can't
have interviewed and have a
decision the following week,
I say May 15th.
So yes, we're certainly, you know,
August is coming right up
and it's very important for
us to make sure that, you know,
you're not left out of
medical school for a matter of time,
right?
You're qualified, you're excited,
you're ready to go.
We think you're going to be
a great part of our community.
By all means, please apply.
Let's find out right away if you're,
going to be extended an
offer of admission.
If you're not, well, again,
it's a conversation.
We want you to succeed.
If there's anything that we
can do to help you better
prepare for an additional
round of admission
application in the future,
we will be very prescriptive, right?
We're here to help you.
We're here to make sure that
you're prepared and ready
to be excellent in medical
school with us.
There's a sort of a related
question about someone
who had previously applied
and they're asking can they
reapply without knowing the
details of why you didn't
continue with their application.
I think the fact that the
MedPrep course is coming
online soon may be a
different avenue for you to gain access,
but all I can say is look at the details,
decide whether the MedPrep
may be the course for you.
You want to do it, then apply.
If somebody is,
let's say they're denied in one year,
they reapply the following year,
you can absolutely do that.
This is not a, if you're ever denied,
it's not a, you can never do this again.
We want you to be successful.
You come back next year,
maybe the faculty had given
you a prescriptive path to improve.
They're going to look at
those improvements.
They're going to look at
your efforts on the last year,
and they're going to
reconsider your application.
If it's just a matter of timing,
you had applied,
you didn't follow through
the application,
that, you know, life happens.
People all the time are making a decision.
Do I work for another year
or is this year that I go
to medical school?
Right.
And people think about that
sometimes the whole summer
and all the way right up to
the time they leave for medical school.
Right.
And so that's human nature
and that's the nature of
everybody's careers and
charting your path forward.
We get it.
So yes, you applied before.
Let's say you didn't follow
all the way through with the application.
Absolutely.
You can reactivate your application.
You can reapply.
just contact the admissions department.
They'll get you right back on your way.
And again,
same as if you're applying for
the first time,
there's no reason you can't
apply in one particular week.
Find out about your
interview by the end of
that week and know your
decision by the end of the
following week.
Really,
if you want this to take two weeks
or less,
you can make this take two weeks or less.
You just have to be responsive.
And it's my job to make sure
that our staff and our
faculty are responsive on
our end of the process.
That's our promise that
we're going to make sure
you get this decision as
soon as possible.
We'll be thorough,
but there's no reason this
has to take more than two weeks.
A question about online learning.
We don't have a distance program.
I will say that we have all
sorts of online curriculum supplements,
right?
You have access to, so everything,
as Dr. White mentioned,
is organized through Canvas.
But you have access to micro
lectures through osmosis.
You have full-length
lectures and other
tutorials through Lecturio.
We have any number of
question banks from TrueLearn, AMBOS.
There's about eight or nine
different learning systems that we have.
It sounds a little crazy,
but it's all organized through Canvas.
And what we've tried to do
basically is take care of
the information collection for you.
Our faculty have lesson plans sorted out.
There are no surprises here.
know exactly what's going to
be addressed day by day by
day throughout your four
years of medical school and
it's organized there for
you and it's a matter of
you being able to work
through the the material
individually work through
it as a team and then apply
that together as a group
whether it's in discussion
or whether it's in your
clinical skills lab that's
the whole thesis there to
how we uh you know organize
your academic information
do you want to talk a
little bit about maybe
what it's like having those resources.
Do you, do you,
how much self study happens?
Are you, do you use osmosis?
I mean, I know that some,
some students love having these two,
three minute micro lectures.
Other students don't,
don't use them at all, but maybe can you,
we haven't,
we're trying to support all
the different styles of,
of learning as ultimately
what's happening.
But if you maybe don't let
me talk about your experience,
maybe Patrick and Fatima, Jackie, Evan,
if you,
if you can tell us about
your experience of actually using these.
Yeah, I can talk about my experience.
So just to give context,
so every single day you're given,
it'll be Osmosis, AMBOSS,
and then Lecturio.
So each one kind of does it different.
So for me, I'm a very visual learner.
I like watching videos,
kind of picturing it in my mind.
So Osmosis is like a very
good starting point.
That way, you know,
it's not as detailed as
AMBOSS and Lecturio are.
It'll probably just give you
like more basic understanding.
but you'll get the overall
picture and then it'll be
maybe most of them are
about eight to 12 minute long video.
You put it on two times speed, six minutes,
you're doing fantastic.
And then you can,
after then I get that general idea,
then I can kind of go into
AMBOSS and it makes my
learning a lot faster just
because I've seen the material.
Now I can kind of relook at it again,
maybe slightly more
detailed and then just
reiterate it in my mind.
And then obviously you go
into the next day, you're doing it again,
And then the day after that,
we have a test or not a test,
a formative.
So not graded,
but they give us USMLE style questions,
AMBOSS on the previous day's material.
So you're really looking at
material three times.
So pre-work the day you
actually go in small group
and then the day after you'll do a quiz.
So compared to other schools
where it's a lecture, you go in,
maybe you're paying attention.
You see it once and that's it.
We see it three times and
then you're constantly with the faculty.
They'll hop around and make
sure that you're on top of
your studies and quizzing.
So a lot of it is self study
because it's a flipped classroom.
So if you stay on top of it,
you're doing fantastic.
Um,
but you have to stand up and that's
like any other school.
If you're not on top of it,
the medical school, once you fall behind,
you fall behind so far.
It's just a constant.
So we're not using the time
of our physicians to read to you.
You've had to study, done some self-study,
you've learned the subject matter,
and now you have to
participate in a discussion
with that physician and with your peers.
And it's a classroom model,
but it's different from
most undergraduate programs.
Can you let me know about
your use of the technology
or how that supports your learning?
and maybe what it's like
participating in those
discussions after you've
used that technology.
That's actually going to
follow with Patrick.
So I'm more of a visual learner,
so I do like to watch a
video of us mostly just to
get an idea of what's going to be.
Like, it's an overview, and then get it to,
like, AMBOSS.
And AMBOSS has, like,
nine specs that you can, like,
put in highlight mode.
Everything that is going to be on step one,
based on the first week,
you can use that.
You can highlight just high yield,
or I want to do all overview.
And then once you do it once,
then put the high yield,
then just do the compressed.
So that's how I like to do stuff.
And then do practice questions on that.
You can also go to TrueLearn,
which is what we get texted every Friday,
based on the whole week
material from Friday to
Thursday of that week.
So like Patrick said, we get
We see the material at least
four times before your final.
And then your final at the
end of the semester,
that's the one that then
uses the NVME questions
where our faculty have
taken those from their database.
But you're seeing this many
ways before you have that exam.
And Osmosis also has flash
card notes for those that
like flash cards.
extra supplemental videos
with questions attached to videos.
So it depends on what kind
of learner you are.
So if you're a visual, osmosis,
or two-year videos.
If you're more like,
I like to read handballs.
And again,
that's like you want just high
yield or you want,
I want to learn everything
and then know what's most important.
If your experience has been
similar with the technology or... Yeah,
so for me, I noticed from
varying from different semesters,
I think the best option for
me has some time to be able to learn.
I have to unlearn.
And like some tools that work for me,
like in my school of
skeletal may not work for
me so great in like cardiology.
So I was like, okay,
maybe I have to focus more on AMBOSS.
And like I've been learning
from these guys.
She's an advocate of AMBOSS.
So she has me on AMBOSS.
And I noticed I like to
learn things as high yield
first and then the details
that like AMBOSS provides.
So more of a micro learner.
I like to zoom in.
So for me, I like AMBOSS.
I've been relatively more
into books lately because I'm more of a,
I realized I'm more of like
a tactile visual learner.
So sometimes looking at the screen is good,
but after a while I have to
switch to something else.
And having like a book in my hand is,
for me, it just works.
Nate?
I'm pretty much similar.
I'm not huge on,
I don't really use osmosis
that much anymore.
I use it for microbiome though.
But he's right.
Definitely a huge advocate for AMBAs.
And I do love the books.
So I use a lot of, like,
so you guys offer us, like, you know,
wonderful resources.
So I stick to all of that.
But when I do make my own notes, I do use,
you know, like, the USMLE Step 1 book,
which I feel like is our best friend.
So I use that book.
I take whatever it says because it has,
like, you know,
clue words that you're
going to see in the vignettes.
And I think the greatest
part of all is that if
you're like me and you
struggle with answering questions,
every resource forces you
to answer questions.
So I can always read and do
practice questions.
So every day you do questions, basically.
It's like a given.
And I think it's important, I think,
to point out that we're
providing with all this
support for answering questions.
But the questions we
actually assess you on summatively
are not set by the school.
They are set by the school
in terms of selecting the
questions from the National
Board of Medical Examiners
independent question bank.
So we feel this is quite an
important development for
us to move to that.
Would you support that idea?
I do support it.
And it's something we always
mention that we feel is
very important that we have
because Step 1 is such an
exam that you've never seen
these questions before.
And having our professors
handpick questions,
given that so many of them
have done step one,
they know exactly what
they're assessing from us.
And that's honestly,
I'm a huge supporter of it.
I think it's important for
any institution to have outside review.
And it comes in many
different ways to an institution.
But I think when this became
available academically,
this was no question it was, we thought,
the right thing to do.
I've seen a few questions in
the chat which may have
been already answered,
but several people are
really interested about
Canada and whether they can
go through CALMS,
whether they can get matches.
Do you want to say anything about that?
It's very important we
qualify that in terms of
our… I can tell you that
one of our consultants who
leads our strategy for
Canada in terms of our
student success and
long-term success of the institution
is Sandra Banner.
And Sandra Banner is the
former CEO of CARMS.
And so we hear directly from
Sandra in terms of what we
need to do to be successful
for our students and set
them up for success for
residency when they go
through the CARMS process in Canada.
The thing that really opened
the door recently for the
university is that, you know,
all these things with a
university kind of happened
in a stepwise fashion,
but we had our full
five-year accreditation.
that became recognized by
the World Federation of
Medical Education.
And then the next step after
that was to receive our
ECFMG sponsor notes.
Well,
the ECFMG is the Educational
Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates.
And when we received
basically their approval
for our students to be able
to take the USMLE,
it's actually not just the
USMLE that opened the door to,
that was also for the
Canadian licensing exams.
And so they serve many purposes,
but one of them is also
really as an information clearinghouse
They make sure that when
people are applying to residency,
that they're actually
coming from an accredited medical school.
They're making sure that
basically all the different
terms of their enrollment
are what they seem.
And basically that they've
taken the licensing exams
that were needed and that
they're able to then take
part in not just NRMP,
but it also opens the door to CARMS.
And so I think Sandra was
quite right in pointing it out.
I think our press release initially was,
this is great.
We have the ECFMG sponsor notes.
We can take USMLE and apply to NRMP.
And it wasn't just NRMP,
but it was also the
Canadian licensing exams
and the ability now to go
through the CARMS process.
So that is a process that's
open to our students, right?
So our
We started with our first
class in August of 2023.
We'll have our first
graduating class in 2027.
But we already know that our
students can take the
licensing exams and go
through the residency process.
That's not something to be resolved later.
That is already resolved
even in our first year here of teaching.
This is an interesting
question sort of related to that,
which a urologist,
has advised someone online
that students from the
Caribbean will have a tough
time to practice in Canada.
Is that true?
Well, it's a no.
In North America,
there's a huge portion of
the physicians are actually
trained outside of the US or Canada.
Right now,
You know, to go to CARMS,
it's roughly 500.
You can go to their website.
But there's a certain number
of residencies that they
hold open for Canadians
studying abroad through
their first iteration.
There's a second iteration.
What happens if a Canadian
studying abroad does not
match through CARMS?
Well,
usually what we would advise Canadian
students to do is to then go and match
into a program in the United
States and go through the
process of completing
residency and fellowship,
if that's what their
specialty requires after residency.
And there's different
pathways depending on what
type of medicine that you're discussing.
So many of the provinces, for instance,
have made it very easy for
family medicine physicians
to go back and practice in Canada.
You have a three-year family
medicine training program in the U.S.,
a two-year family medicine
training program in Canada.
You complete your residency in the U.S.,
Again,
I know Ontario changed their rules
for bringing back different
types of physicians over a decade now,
really to encourage now the
passage of physicians that
have done their residency
training in the US back to Canada.
You can ask actually very
detailed questions about any province,
about any area of specialty,
the rules for one area of
specialty versus another.
And I can ask Ms.
Banner,
if she can help me answer
some of those very specific
questions because, again,
she was the head of CARMS
for a couple decades,
and she advises the school because, again,
we're not going to leave
anything to chance here for
our Canadian students.
We're going to hear from the
authorities and the experts in the field,
and that's really how we
design our support and also our program,
so.
which application window is
currently open to
international students and the deadline.
We actually have both the
August 2023 application
cycle open and we also have the, sorry,
August 2024 and the January
2025 application cycle open.
So you can actually apply
for the next two semesters.
There is not a deadline,
but I wouldn't leave anything to chance.
I mean, again,
we do award a large number
of scholarships and grants.
You don't necessarily want
to be the last person in
line that's applying to school,
hoping that, frankly,
that the scholarship budget
hasn't been exhausted for
that particular semester.
You know, we don't have a time machine.
You can't go backwards and
apply three months ago,
but what you can do is apply today,
and let's get you a
decision in the next two
weeks for whichever
semester it is that you're
looking to join,
and let's get you a
decision as soon as
possible so you can
actually now make this
decision about going to
medical school with that
admission in hand.
It says,
how competitive is your school in
terms of fee structure?
I can tell you that the full
length of the program
without scholarships is
$214,000 US dollars.
And it really shows almost
entirely as tuition.
There's maybe a couple of minor fees.
We don't play games trying to hide
tuition as a fee or anything like that.
It's $214,000.
So if you look at in-state
tuition in the United States,
it averages about $235,000 right now.
So we're a little bit under
in-state tuition.
We're well under private or
out-of-state tuition in the US,
which is right around $300,000.
If you look at programs in the Caribbean,
there's some that are as
much as $350,000 for tuition,
several that are around $300,000.
We are the only
private nonprofit.
There's one public nonprofit,
which is the University of
the West Indies.
They have campuses in Jamaica and Barbados,
Trinidad too.
But they're really focused
mostly on training
physicians expressly for
the nations here in the Caribbean.
We are a private nonprofit
that is really focused on
training students to
succeed in residency and
practice in North America
and the United States and Canada, right?
So that's, you know,
I think that we offer a
superior education, right?
I just look at what are we doing?
We're making every online
resource that you mentioned
that you use and describe that you use.
Those are, they're commonplace at U.S.
medical schools, right?
You know,
we haven't invented the use of those,
but we've looked at best
practices and we've brought
them all to you.
I would challenge anybody to
find how many U.S.
medical schools do you have
a full-time practicing
physician that sits all day
with their students.
You just don't see that, right?
And it is an incredible
outlay of resources for a
medical school to take a
physician out of a hospital
and out of practice and put
them with no more than 10 students.
Some of our learning teams
only have four or five
students with that physician, right?
Just depending on the
semester and the session.
So we're putting this
incredible amount of resources to this.
How are we able to do this?
Well, we're nonprofit, right?
And so that's the so what, right?
Why other schools would
charge 300 or something thousand dollars?
I can't answer that.
It seems a lot of money if
I'm sitting in a lecture
that's the size of Rhode
Island and I'm being
charged as much as going to Harvard,
right?
But we don't do that, right?
I mean, we, I think,
give an extraordinary degree of hands-on,
focused,
support to our students,
a physician embedded with
every learning team all day,
every resource that you
mentioned online for you to
work with all night.
And we can do that for less
than the cost of in-state US tuition,
which is, I feel good about that.
Now, beyond that, most of our students,
the majority of our
students receive significant scholarships,
right?
So while the total cost for
all four years might be $214,000,
Many are paying a fee that's
much less than that.
But again, you have to apply.
There's merit scholarships.
There's different
scholarships because of volunteer work.
There's been grants given
because of financial need.
So, but we can't, you know,
we've got to get you
through the faculty
admissions process before I
can tell you what that looks like.
And that's what our
financial aid department is there for.
They're actually very independent as well,
just like our faculty
admissions committee.
they're there to make sure
that you have a way to get
to medical school, right?
And they have a lot of
leeway there in terms of
how the scholarships are awarded.
Some are very prescriptive and specific.
If it's a dean's scholarship,
it's an honor scholarship.
There might be very hard and
fast academic requirements
for those merit scholarships.
But the financial aid
department has a wide
degree of discretion there.
But as you can tell,
I'm very proud that we're
organized as a nonprofit.
The so what is that it keeps
us focused on the students.
We can, I think,
provide world-class resources,
yet still keep the cost
lower than is typical in the US.
In terms of what it might
cost to go to school in Canada,
we're far more expensive
than a Canadian medical school.
But of course, in Canada,
most of the cost of medical
school is being underwritten locally.
That is different.
Let's see.
Next question.
The question was,
will the grant be available online?
I think does that mean can
you apply for a scholarship online?
Yeah,
so the question is about applying for
scholarships.
You apply for admission.
Financial aid is going to
review your scholarship for your review.
Once you're admitted,
they're gonna be able to
review your information and
see what you're eligible for.
They're certainly gonna call you.
They're gonna ask you a
number of questions to see
what you might be eligible
for that we may not be
aware of if we didn't catch
it in your application.
So again,
financial aid is trying to find
our students funding.
They're trying to find you money.
So the first thing is to
apply and be admitted and
financial aid kicks in the height here.
trying to make sure that you
have the best package possible.
How can I donate to the school?
What a fantastic question.
We do love that question.
Actually, it was interesting, you know,
we've just started our foundation,
our foundation process and organization.
So it's actually chaired by Ambassador
hubert charles and so he's
really a statesman uh from
dominique he had been
ambassador at different
times the united nations
the united states had been
I think spent a decade in
africa on a unesco mission
author of several books uh
president at one time of
dominica state college so
um but uh really um uh uh
the honorable or hubert
charles was leading that
for the university so you
could email my office I'm
I'm the president of the
university and uh
Actually, Elodie,
if you could put up my email address,
I'll make sure that you get
in contact with Mr. Charles,
His Excellency.
And again, foundation work's important,
right?
If you're able to support your students
if you're able to provide
great scholarships,
you will have great students.
You have great students,
you'll have great graduates,
you'll have a great university.
And so it's a major
undertaking for us that
we're really now getting going.
Okay,
so we've actually overrun
considerably on the topic originally.
But these have been great questions.
That's because we've had
such a whole load of great questions.
I'd like to thank everybody
online for the questions they've asked.
Before we actually conclude, I don't know,
Mr. James,
whether you have any concluding remarks,
but I'd also like the
students just to sort of
say why you think Axiom is
a good school and why you'd
encourage people to apply to it.
Let's hear from the students.
Yeah.
Well, so it's a great school, one,
because it matches my learning style.
So the small group,
the student faculty ratio,
also just the support that
you have through the school.
is immense.
And I've never really gotten
that support anywhere else.
So at first, it was all new and stuff.
But here,
you're not hesitant to reach out
for help.
And all questions are good questions.
And every day,
you learn so much more than
what you thought you were going to learn.
That's my favorite part.
For me,
it's been great between these guys.
It's been more and more and
more great when it comes to support,
but going to the faculty, I mean,
there's plenty of times
that I've bothered Dr.
White just to vent when I'm stressed out.
You're never about that.
It's the dean of students.
That's his job.
But it's very close to the community.
I mean, even from
the faculty, the staff.
It's a very small family,
and you get kind of used to it,
and through thick and tough times,
you get to support,
and whether it be academically,
whether it be emotionally, and even,
I know sometimes people in church,
and they have events when
it comes to being spiritually.
This is going to be your home,
so it's nice to be able to
converse with people, and not only that,
you're surrounded by people
in a position of
by medical professionals and
it's nice to get their
outlook and their
experience and then you
have your own background so
I mean it's a super
welcoming so for me I would
never choose anywhere else
I'm exactly ready to go I'm
in agreeance with my
friends right here it's
been truly a blessing being
here everyone from day one
we're all like a big family
from professors from peers
everyone even the community
everyone has been very
welcoming they're very
sweet they're like looking
forward to getting to know
us looking forward for the
school to grow but just the
way how our environment is
and again faculty to ratio
the connection every
professor is looking up for
each student they check up
on us individually as a
group in the group chat
You could also, like, one message away,
like, it could be 7, 8 p.m.,
you need some advice, you're, like,
having a minor, like, panic attack,
anything, like, they're there for you,
and your peers also, like,
whenever we want some time and, like,
time to decompress, we have the ISG,
we go to the gym, we work out,
and then get back to study,
but we have each other's back,
and it's been a great experience.
I mean,
they basically said everything you
could ever say.
But having a small group makes it,
you know,
you get to know each other so well.
You get to know the faculty so well.
So, I mean, as I stated multiple,
multiple times, it is very, you know,
adhesive.
It's a big family.
And it's very, very nice.
But beyond that, it's also the curriculum.
The curriculum is one and
above every other school
you could ever go to.
Having a position as, you know, your,
right away faculty having
the access to them,
going over real life cases
that they experienced in their, you know,
time as a clinician.
And then just being entirely
enveloped and surrounded by
medicine makes you excited for it,
makes you, you know,
want to be passionate about it.
And then you also just learn
better that way.
You know,
maybe if you're back home in the States,
you got a lot of distractions,
Here there's not a whole lot
of distractions.
It's medicine medicine medicine,
and that's how you kind of
learn it how you practice
it There was just one final
question which I'd like to
ask each of you for
Effectively a one-word
answer and that is which
branch of medicine are you
aspiring to join eventually?
So emergency medicine,
but make you babies I would
be emergency medicine
Our founder Dr. is an
interventional radiologist.
And I want to do internal
and specialized cardio.
So quite a wide variety of aspirations.
I'd like to finish just by
thanking Mr. James for his
tremendous contribution,
but more so the four students.
They've given up their busy
study schedules to come and
talk to you all online about the school.
So unless Mr. James wants to
say anything else,
I would just thank everyone
for joining us this
afternoon and wish you all
a great evening.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Please reach out, ask us questions.
We're always here.
Thank you.