COM Outlook Winter 2021

NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | 33 In late March, NSU’s Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine (KPCOM) faculty and staff members dealt with the daunting transition of working from home, while students were in an understandable state of con- fusion as to how classes and clinical rotations, as well as grad- uation and orientation activities, were going to proceed. Faced with many questions at both the Fort Lauderdale/Davie and Tampa Bay Regional campuses, suitable solutions had to be crafted quickly. “Collaboration played an important role in getting the KPCOM to accomplish what it did in such a short amount of time,” said Delia Harper-Celestine, Ed.D., M.P.H., assistant dean of student affairs. “Spearheaded by the college’s dean Dr. Elaine Wallace, administrators, faculty and staff members, and students met regularly with an eye to detail on working through orientation, graduation, rotations, and curricu- lum modifications.” Curriculum Creativity Keeping in mind the virus’s unpredictability, plans to fully resume in-person lectures and labs were pushed back several times from summer, to fall, and finally to the winter 2021 semester, resulting in several curricular modifications. When classes resumed in early August for the first- and second- year students, they were conducted virtually through the Zoom plat- form. The order of lectures also changed to allow students to complete some academic require- ments in a different sequence. For example, all laboratory exercises and hands-on courses were moved to the winter 2021 term—a process overseen by Hilda De Gaetano, D.O., M.S., FAAP, FACOP, senior assistant dean of preclinical education. “At the start of the pandemic, we used lecture recordings from the previous year and recorded new lectures as necessary. The student schedules were redone so they would have five prerecord- ed lectures each day and the remaining time to study,” De Gaetano explained. “We added discussion boards for all courses in Canvas and continued with the familiar test- ing modality using iPads,” she added. “For the fall semester, we moved to live, synchronous lectures rather than prerecorded lectures. This is being done through Zoom, and students can use the chat feature for questions in real time. We are also continu- ing with the discussion boards, which had been very well received.” CONUNDRUM BY SCOTT COLTON, B.A., APR, AND JOEY GARCIA, B.S. OPERATIONAL INGENUITY EXHIBITED DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC Kristi Messer (right) with undergraduate students during the Fall 2020 Student Welcome Lunch in the atrium of the Carl DeSantis Building. (continued on page 34)