Office of Educational Affairs, School of Medicine Records

Beginning with the creation of a Committee on Instruction, a move to compartmentalize the internal administration of the School of Medicine, this department would later become the Medical Education Group, or “Blue Sky” Committee, the Task Force on Curriculum Planning, the Curriculum Committee, and then finally, the Office of Educational Affairs. As of 2017, the head of this office is the Dean for Educational Affairs at the School of Medicine, and the office is responsible for overseeing all administrative work related to curriculum, educational grants, faculty support, and class scheduling, as well as managing the Clinical Skills and Simulation Center (CSSC).

In 1913, the School of Medicine had grown sufficiently in numbers and complexity to require a reorganization of its internal administration. The school was split into six departments and the needs of these departments were represented by a Committee on Instruction. The creation of the Committee on Instruction relieved the Administrative Committee of much of the burden of settling purely educational matters and allowed it to concentrate on the business affairs of the school and the activities which required review or action by the Tufts Trustees. The Committee on Instruction met monthly.

In 1968, the Medical Education Group (also known as the Faculty “Blue Sky” Committee) submitted a proposal for curricular reform titled the “Blue Sky Report.” The “Blue Sky” group met regularly to create a new formulation of the goals and structures of the curriculum and became the Task Force on Curriculum Planning. They would later become the Curriculum Committee. As a result of the “Blue Sky Report,” the Office of Educational Affairs, at the time called the Office of Research in Educational and Organizational Innovation, began to structuralize.

As of 2017, the OEA is located at 145 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA. The Dean for Educational Affairs at the School of Medicine is Scott K. Epstein, MD. The office is responsible for overseeing curricular development, managing educational grants, supporting the teaching faculty, providing administrative support, and scheduling space for classes, conferences, and meetings in the Health Sciences campus. It also manages the Clinical Skills and Simulation Center (CSSC), a training facility for clinical skills and diagnostic reasoning practice on computerized mannequins.