Welcome to the Office of Assessment

The Office of Assessment works collaboratively with curricular leaders across the Shared Discovery Curriculum to:

• Create and deliver the Progress Clinical Skills Examination (PCSE), given twice per semester across all the required, integrated courses;
• Administer the Comprehensive Necessary Science Examinations (CNSE), which are progress tests of scientific and clinical knowledge;
• Collect multisource feedback from preceptors, interprofessional team members, and peers;
• Facilitate direct observation of clinical skills in authentic clinical settings;
• Create and deliver a variety of portfolio assessments to demonstrate attainment of course learning objectives and milestones;
• Support the Student Competence Committee, which reviews student data and recommends course grades for HM 552-556 and HM 651-655;
• Maintain and update the Manual for Assessment and Promotion, including the milestone framework;
• Provide additional information or guidance for students such as PCSE coaching , PCSE formative feedback letters, Prospective Performance Graphs for the PCSE and CNSE, the JustInTime student dashboards, etc.
• Offer an honest broker system for educational research to protect the confidentiality of students

Assessment Office

965 Wilson Rd
East Fee Hall, Suite 106
East Lansing, MI  48824

Assessment Team

• Heather Laird-Fick, Director of Assessment

  Heather Laird-Fick, MD, MPH, FACP
  lairdhea@msu.edu
  Professor, Dept. of Medicine
  Administrative Assistant: Amy Pohl 

  Dr. Laird-Fick is a general internist and clinical educator who joined the faculty in 2001. She has served a variety of administrative and teaching roles, including Advanced Medicine clerkship director, internal medicine residency associate program director and program director, and most recently Director of Assessment for the college's Shared Discovery Curriculum. Her research interests include assessment of medical learners, competency-based education and training, and cancer in aging populations.

• Heather Litts, Evaluation Database Manager

  Heather Litts, MA
  pitchea@msu.edu
  Evaluation Database Manager

  Heather Litts has been with the College of Human Medicine since 2011. Formally a teacher, she has a background in education with a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership. She works primarily in the management of the evaluation database software, New Innovations, creating resource materials and training sessions for staff, students, and faculty. In addition to this role, Ms. Litts supports the implementation of multi-source feedback for the Early and Middle Clinical Experience phases of the curriculum and assists the Academy in survey distribution for program evaluation. She works closely with the clinical campuses and departments in the Late Clinical Experience to ensure proper production and distribution of assessments as well as create and manage crucial report products that are necessary for LCME accreditation.

• Robert Malinowski, Assistant Director of Assessment

  Robert Malinowski, PhD, DVM, MA
  malino11@msu.edu
  Assistant Professor

  Robert Malinowski provides high-level faculty leadership and subject matter expertise in support of CHM’s Shared Discovery Curriculum. He also provides leadership for Academic Affairs on investing in dynamic incorporation of technology and methods into teaching and assessment. In 2015, Malinowski received the Distinguished Faculty Award for his teaching efforts in the Online Master of Science in Food Safety program. In 2019, he completed the Lilly Teaching Fellows Program with a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) project titled “Evaluating Student Competence in the Shared Discovery Curriculum”.

  Malinowski collaborates with the Just in Time Medicine (JIT) and Assessment teams. He creates curricular content in JIT and works with the development team to improve functionality and optimize faculty and student experiences. He works with the Assessment team to address the needs of the Student Competence Committee, generate reports that highlight trends and areas of concern, facilitate the Progress Suite of Assessments and provide oversight and support for the implementation of the multi-source feedback process to better meet CHM’s needs, process improvements and refinements.

• Lora McAdams, Assessment Administrator

  Lora McAdams
  mcadams@msu.edu
  Assessment Administrator & Student Performance Committee Coordinator

• Ashley Overbeck, Curriculum Assistant

  Ashley Overbeck
  overbe13@msu.edu
  Curriculum Assistant

  Ashley is a curriculum assistant in the Office of Assessment. She acts as the LCE Assessment Liaison and assists with various administrative tasks to support both clinical experiences and assessment.

• Amy Pohl, Administrative Assistant

  Amy Pohl
  pohlam@msu.edu
  Administrative Assistant

  Amy is an administrative assistant for the Assessment office. She has been employed by the College of Human Medicine since 2007. Amy provides valuable administrative support for the Director and the unit, always happy to assist with the numerous activities of the team.

• Mary Ellen Shea, Data Analyst

  Mary Ellen Shea
  sheama@msu.edu
  Data Analyst

• Ann Taft, Statistical Analyst

  Ann Taft, BS
  tafta@msu.edu
  Statistical Analyst

  Ann maintains the CHM Student Performance Database which is used to report on student outcomes and is a helpful resource for research and program evaluation. She manages the annual surveying of CHM graduates and current CHM students as well as analyzing and summarizing the results of those surveys each year. As an honest broker, Ann serves as an intermediary between the investigator and CHM students when research involves data that the students routinely generate in the course of their educational program. An honest broker protects the identity of the students while having the ability to link data from multiple sources and add additional information about students for the researchers, without identifying the students to the investigators. Ann is also an integral member of the Assessment Analytics Team.