Dean's Update
September 10, 2025 - Aron Sousa, MD
Friends,
Depending on how and when news finds you, I write this update to announce or confirm or explain that I am retiring from Michigan State. As you will know, I have spent my career at the College of Human Medicine working to improve the university and the college by serving the people of our communities. I am incredibly proud of the work you all have done; thank you for sharing your intelligence, dedication, and grit with me over the last 29 years.
The majority of my time at the college has been in education, as either an education-focused faculty member of the Department of Medicine or as the senior associate dean for academic affairs. I cut my teeth in the early 2000s on the design of our competency-based education system and LCME accreditation, and then I focused on the expansion of Grand Rapids from a two-year campus to be a four-year campus, including programming the Secchia Center and the planning and work to double the class size.
The Secchia Center, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month, has been a remarkable success across two curricula and more than 1,500 medical students. With the expansion our team hired a new group of faculty focused on teaching students in Grand Rapids in cooperation with faculty in East Lansing, including those teaching College of Osteopathic Medicine students. (Check out last week’s Town Hall for some of that history.) Through dozens of hires of faculty and staff, new programming, new technology, new space, an expansion of our clinical campus in Grand Rapids, we came in on time, accredited, on budget, and in better intellectual and financial shape then before the expansion despite the Great Recession. That is a pattern the college has repeated over and over. We take calculated risks, partner, work our tails off, and succeed.
During that same time, we opened in Traverse City the college’s first new clinical campus since the founding of the college. In a fit of nostalgia, I tracked down a fugue of campus planning spreadsheets that began in 2008 with a 74-item worklist/melody for Traverse City that developed into a 125-item melody for Detroit in 2022. In between, we created campuses in Midland and Southfield, while the expanding penumbra of medical schools in the state led to us closing two of our legacy campuses.
Through the creation of the Traverse City and Midland campuses, we had the opportunity to expand and energize the college’s rural medical education program. Under the direction of Andrea Wendling, MD, the rural program nearly tripled in size and expanded from our nationally groundbreaking campus in the Upper Peninsula to become the premier rural health education program in the country. At this point, the college’s rural work has moved beyond education to encompass research, like ECHO, and public health research interventions, like MIRACLE and Rx Kids.
Two weeks ago, we celebrated the expansion of the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health and their 40,000-square-foot building at our Flint campus in cooperation with Uptown Reinvestment Corporation and the Mott Foundation. My first notes about the expansion in Flint are from 2007, and the originating grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation was in 2010-11. As a part of that first grant, we assessed what a 50-student full medical school experience could look like in Flint. I set up a team with Dianne Wagner, MD, to assess that opportunity and to create a Flint-focused curriculum we called the Milestones Curriculum that included progress testing, a longitudinal clinical experience in the first year, small group case-based teaching, and a series of disease-specific modules. There is a clear path from the Milestones to the Shared Discovery Curriculum (SDC) pilot in 2013 and the eventual implementation of the SDC in 2016.
The Shared Discovery Curriculum was one the largest projects our college has taken on. I had academic affairs colleagues at other institutions who created a “new curriculum” by putting every lecture on a sticky note and then rearranging the lectures on a white board. That is not what we did. The SDC was really, really new and innovative. We focused on experiential learning and a combination of competency-based and entrustment assessments using case-based teaching, progress assessments, and simulation. At least until COVID, the SDC clearly improved test scores and decreased student extensions. This next year, we are adjusting to the new Step 1 and 2 scoring systems and following up on what we have learned over the last decade with SDC 2.0. I am optimistic and excited to see these changes take effect, and I am delighted to see our Step 2 pass rate this year at 99%!
I am excited to report that late this fall I will move to Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Sciences to be their president and chief executive officer. They are a remarkable, graduate health university with six colleges: the Chicago Medical School, College of Health Professions, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, the Dr. William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine, and the School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. The institution dates back to pre-Flexner days and was founded in part to provide a medical education to students who could only attend at night. It was one of the first medical schools to encourage community service, and to this day, it has a remarkable interprofessional student-run clinic. The people of RFU have a dedication to students, enthusiasm for discovery and innovation, and investment in their community that reminds me a lot of the College of Human Medicine and MSU. It is geographically across the lake and is existentially right next door.
The provost has announced that Supratik Rayamajhi, MD, will be the interim starting October 1, 2025. I am so pleased with her choice. I have known and worked with Dr. Rayamajhi since 2008, and he is a remarkable man. He was interim chair of medicine for two and a half years, is a successful hypertension researcher who is core to NIH-funded projects, is the long-time Internal Medicine residency director, and spent years as a clerkship director. Of late, he has been the associate dean for clinical affairs working to help our faculty and departments in the clinical wilds. He, like every dean in the past and the future, will have much to learn and will need your support. Most importantly to me, Supratik has the attributes of a dean and leader – he lives the mission, and, in my experience, he always works to make a situation better. Supratik and I will be meeting regularly, so he understands the projects and struggles we are working on. He is surrounded by what I believe is the best group of senior associate and associate deans the college has had. Granted, I am a bit biased, but I am convinced the college is in good hands.
As excited as I am to take on this next challenge, the decision to leave Michigan State and the College of Human Medicine has been painful. Thanks to the work of so many people over the last two decades, the college is in a remarkable position. We have a vibrant and strong set of educational programs across all our degree and certificate programs. Our educational and engagement work that comes out of the community campuses is truly nation leading.
From our premier rural medical education program to NIH work in six campuses to our network of research excellence across Grand Rapids, East Lansing, Flint, and now Detroit, we have done what few other institutions have been able to do. Two decades ago, the college was a minor contributor to the university’s research work, and now a majority of the university’s NIH work is in our college. Our faculty receive more grant awards than any other college in the university, and we are close to being the leading college in total research funding. We have been excellent in recruiting, leveraging philanthropy and community partnerships, investing in research-intensive faculty who break the mold of the university’s more traditional faculty models born out of the Sputnik era. Through remarkable work and partnerships between students, staff, faculty, administrators, and community partners, we have done more than anyone imagined at the turn of the century. There is no magic in synergy; entropy must still be vanquished through work and dedication.
The hardest part of leaving is leaving the people. Over the decades there are so many people who have taught me and collaborated with me in the college, the university, and in our communities. I know these are, at best, interesting times, nationally and locally, which means each decision spins off innumerable possible outcomes. I take solace that we have excellent leadership in the dean’s office, innovative and engaged chairs, and, especially, spectacular staff, faculty, and students. I ask you to remember that we are serving the people and not serving the person, and with that spirit you all will continue to do our noble, important work.
Serving the people with you, always,
Aron
Aron Sousa, MD, FACP
Dean, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine