Office of Educational Affairs, School of Medicine Records

Collection

Call Number: UA146

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Scope and Contents

This collection contains Tufts School of Medicine course syllabi, class schedules, committee minutes, and subject files. The subject files were compiled by Mary Y. Lee, former Dean of Education Affairs at the School of Medicine. They include agendas, minutes, annual reports, correspondence, and grant applications.

Dates

1968 -- 2019

Creator

Office for Educational Affairs

Access

This collection contains some restricted material. Restrictions related to specific material are listed in the detailed contents list.

Conditions Governing Use

Some material in this collection may be protected by copyright and other rights. Please see “Reproductions and Use” on the Digital Collections and Archives website for more information about reproductions and permission to publish. Copyright to all materials created by Tufts University employees in the course of their work is held by the Trustees of Tufts University.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Transferred by the Office of Educational Affairs of the School of Medicine, 2007-2018.

Arrangement

This collection is organized into four series: School of Medicine Syllabi; Unprocessed accessions; School of Medicine class schedules and committee minutes; and Mary Y. Lee's files.

Extent

51.6 Linear Feet (43 record cartons)

22 Digital Object(s)

4.37 Gigabytes (Of the 22 digital objects in this collection, 13 have extent information and comprise 4.37 GBs of data.)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Overview

This collection contains records created by the Office of Educational Affairs in the School of Medicine.

Biographical / Historical

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.

Processing Information

This collection may require review before use. This collection was processed by Jennifer Phillips, supervised by Eliot Wilczek. Mary Y. Lee files was processed by Liz Francis, records archivist, in the summer of 2014. 2017 and 2018 accessions processed by Leah Edelman in 2017-2018. Digital objects were virus checked, bagged using Bagger, and ingested to the Digital Library or made available through Box. A file-level inventory was created, and series-level description as well as the finding aid was updated at the time of processing.