Issue link: https://kusm-wichita.uberflip.com/i/1545861
NEW ASSOCIATE DEANS AND ROLES Preparing to move into a big new campus downtown is energizing but brings a big responsibility: Ensuring all medical students keep receiving the support they need to succeed even as first- and second-year classes grow notably from 28 students to 70, says Colleen Loo-Gross, M.D., MPH, the new associate dean for student affairs. Student affairs, in a sense, covers everything outside of the medical curriculum from academic counseling to wellness, financial aid, professional development, career advising and more. Since joining the faculty in 2018, Loo-Gross — a KUSM-Wichita graduate — has had roles including student coaching; Active, Competency-based and Excellence-driven curriculum small group facilitation; service and leadership on standing committees; student and resident teaching; and clinical practice at HealthCore Clinic and Wesley Medical Center. An associate professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine, Loo-Gross says she'll be guided as associate dean by the example of past leaders as well as the commitment to "ensuring that every physician we graduate provides exceptional quality care. That means they not only have medical knowledge but also are good human beings and physicians who treat the whole individual. That's what we really aim for at our institution." Twenty-nine, 26 and a comparatively brief 13 years. KU School of Medicine- Wichita has been blessed with many years of stable leadership in some of its core departments — Family & Community Medicine, General Surgery and Obstetrics & Gynecology. During their tenures, Rick Kellerman, M.D., Alex Ammar, M.D., and David Grainger, M.D., led programs that — like the medical school itself during those years — grew, evolved and matured. Now, a new generation of leaders is taking charge of those departments and residency programs, all of them fittingly graduates of KUSM-Wichita, its residency programs or both. At the same time, under the administration of Dean Laura Tapati, M.D., new associate deans are taking responsibility for three key functions at the medical school: student affairs, undergraduate medical education, and graduate medical education. Colleen Loo-Gross, M.D., MPH lasting legacies 9