Medical Scientist Training Program Curriculum

Overview Essentials Core Clinical Core & Advanced Studies Graduate Program Options

Overview return to top

The University of Colorado Denver MSTP curriculum: A prescription for life-long learning

Medicine, science and society are constantly changing. To ensure that our graduates are up to the challenge, the CU Denver School of Medicine is completely transforming its four-year curriculum. Students will learn through a sequence of interdisciplinary Blocks and Threads that are designed to gradually build student competency in our mission of education, research, clinical care, and community service. At the UCD School of Medicine, we provide future physicians/scientists with the scientific, clinical, and communication skills necessary to develop and effectively deliver state-of-the-art health care to an increasingly diverse population.

A New Curriculum

The entire four years of the new UCD School of Medicine curriculum has been redesigned, thanks to the efforts of teams from basic science, behavioral science and clinical faculty. The new inter-digitated curriculum allows MSTP students to complete both required Medical and Graduate School Curricula, USMLE, Preliminary Graduate Exam and lab rotations during their first two years (Phases I and II).

The new curriculum:

Is divided into four phases: the Essentials Core (Phases I and II), the Clinical Core (Phase III), and Advanced Studies (Phase IV).
Integrates basic science and clinical material both horizontally and vertically throughout all four phases.
Encourages independent, self-directed learning.
Promotes advanced clinical examination and clinical reasoning skills.

Three new courses have been created:

Foundations for MSTP Students in Thesis Years: This course will be a special Foundations Course that will continue in a modified, less frequent manner during the MSTP students' thesis lab years. This Course will be limited to the MSTP students. The goal of this new course is to allow students to work with a preceptor over an extended period and follow patients for a longer duration of time.
The second is a modified version of the small group, Case discussion section of "Molecules to Medicine", limited to the presentation and discussion of the Case Studies, that will have the expected 80 hrs, 8 weeks of contact. This Course will be open to both MSTP and PS students. The course will be overseen by the MSTP Director (Arthur Gutierrez-Hartmann) and Associate Director (Angie Ribera).
The third new Course will be occur during Phase IV and will be devoted to issues relevant to Clinical Studies (e.g., COMIRB, HIPAA, GCRC, Statistics, Population Studies). This Course will be developed in collaboration/discussion with the Advanced Studies Program.

Woven through the four-year curriculum are Threads that will integrate behavioral and social sciences, informatics, and evidence-based medicine into the curriculum.

Humanities, Ethics, and Professionalism
Medicine and Society
Cultural Competency and Diversity
Informatics and Evidence-based Medicine

Other highlights of the new curriculum include:

Scholarly Work: Each student will develop and pursue a scholarly activity throughout their undergraduate medical education, guided by a faculty mentor and leading to the completion of a scholarly project in the fourth year. Through this activity students are encouraged to become active, self-directed learners who recognize the importance of scholarly pursuit in the practice of medicine.
Center for Studies in Clinical Excellence: This innovative center provides students with a simulated clinical environment using highly trained standardized patients in order to effectively assess students' knowledge, skills, and behavior.

Essentials Core Curriculum return to top

The Essentials Core Curriculum comprises the first 18 months of medical education. It is separated into two phases, each consisting of a series of interdisciplinary blocks that present basic science in a clinical context. The aim of the Essentials Core is to provide the scientific foundation for the students' further medical education and to begin to equip each student for a lifetime of learning, research and/or clinical care, and community service.

During Phase I, MSTP students take courses administered by all of the UC Denver basic science graduate training programs, fulfilling the core course requirements of these graduate programs, as well as those of the medical school. For example, in Phase I, students take the core graduate course required by all programs and some program-specific elective courses. The graduate core course is literature-based, hypothesis-driven, and focused on biological mechanisms. The students are required to present research papers in a critical manner, and thus, they begin to read the original scientific literature from the outset. Additionally, rather than testing students for their ability simply to memorize facts, students are tested for their ability to think critically and creatively. For example, students are often asked to interpret a set of experimental data, to propose a hypothesis based on their interpretation, and to design well-controlled experiment(s) that rigorously and directly test their proposed hypothesis.

Phase I (August to June of the first year)

Human Body
Molecules to Medicine
Disease & Defense
Blood & Lymph
Cardiovascular, Pulmonary & Renal
Graduate Core Course

Phase II

Nervous System
Metabolism
Infectious Disease
Life Cycle

During the spring semester, first and second year students are encouraged to discuss potential projects with the various faculty whom they are considering for a summer rotation, and to visit their laboratories and attend their laboratory meetings. Students discuss choices of potential mentors and research projects with the Program Director (Dr. Arthur Gutierrez-Hartmann), the MSTP Associate Director (Dr. Angie Ribera) and the advisor of the appropriate graduate program. The summer rotation is about 10 weeks in length, and at the end of the rotation students present their results as a post-rotation seminar.

By the end of Phase II, MSTP students will have completed all of the pre-clinical medical school requirements, two years of the Foundations of Doctoing course, the core graduate course requirements for most training Programs, the Graduate Preliminary exam, National Boards Part I, two-three laboratory rotations, and taken both required ethics courses (Medical and Ethics in Research).

The Doctoral Thesis Research Years

Choice of Preceptor

All of the MSTP Training Faculty, their research interests, and recent publications are listed on this website in the faculty section . Choice of potential mentors actually begins during the recruitment process, when applicants that have been selected for interview are directed to this site and asked to identify faculty they would like to meet during their visit to the Denver area. Additionally, in the MSTP Seminar Course, two MSTP faculty per week introduce themselves and their research to the MSTP students. Also, almost all Programs have a scientific retreat in the fall, and MSTP students are invited to attend. The MSTP students attend the retreat(s) of the Program(s) they are most interested in, and thus learn more about the specific research opportunities and meet the professors, other graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in that Program. To help the students in their choice of laboratory, the MSTP Director meets with each student several times during the first and second year, and encourages the student to visit with several investigators and their laboratories, and to attend their laboratory meetings in the spring. Also, for further and more specific advice, the students meet with the graduate advisor of the Programs that they are most highly considering. In this manner, the graduate advisors of the various graduate programs have become an ad hoc advisory group to the MSTP students.

Typically, most students enter their doctoral thesis laboratory at the beginning of the third year. If the student has not identified a suitable thesis advisor by the end of the second summer rotation, or feels that the rotation time was insufficient to make such an important choice, the student is allowed to take a third rotation in the fall of the third year, either in a different laboratory altogether, or in one of the two original rotation laboratories. Once the choice of thesis advisor is made, the student formally transfers into the appropriate Ph.D. degree-granting program. Since the establishment of Interdepartmental Graduate Programs, most MSTP training faculty are members of one or more of these interdisciplinary programs in addition to maintaining their Departmental appointment. Thus, MSTP students have the flexibility to choose one of the thesis advisor's Program affiliations, either departmental or interdisciplinary, in which to complete the PhD thesis requirements.

Comprehensive Exam and Thesis Defense

By the fall of the third year, most MSTP students have accumulated the necessary credit hours required to take the Comprehensive exam. In the majority of training programs, advancement to candidacy requires the successful completion of a qualifying comprehensive oral exam in which a student presents and defends a research proposal written in the format of a grant application. The Comprehensive Examination Committee is usually also the Doctoral Thesis Committee, and we strongly encourage that a member of the Steering Committee, or one of its Subcommittees, be a member of MSTP student's comprehensive/thesis committee. Finally, the occasional required course, and any upper-level elective course(s) that the thesis advisor and student agree would contribute to the overall training goals, are completed during the research years. Other graduate program-specific requirements, such as annual seminar presentations, bi-annual Thesis committee meetings, journal club, and Program retreat and seminar attendance, are also completed during the research years.

Performance and Evaluation

MSTP students are evaluated at multiple levels throughout their training. In the first two years, performance is monitored by classroom achievement, with Course Directors notifying the MSTP Director of any specific problems. Since they are formally graduate students in the first two years and during their thesis work, the Graduate School monitors their academic GPA in courses taken for graduate credit, which must be maintained at 3.0 per semester, as per Graduate School rules. The summer laboratory rotations and post-rotation seminars are evaluated by the research mentor and Dr. Angie Ribera, the MSTP Associate Director. Once the student enters a thesis laboratory, then the student's performance is formally tracked by the specific training Program, via the Comprehensive examination and Dissertation committee process, and by the Graduate Training Committee of the training program. In addition, the Medical school closely monitors all medical students via the Associate Dean of Student Affairs and the Honors and Promotions Committee, and these faculty deal with issues pertaining to the first two and last two years of the MSTP's medical education.

Clinical Core and Advanced Studies Curriculum return to top

The Clinical Core Curriculum fully immerses students in the culture of medicine and direct patient care. Phase III is comprised of six interdepartmental Clerkship Blocks providing intensive clinical experiences in hospital, ambulatory clinic, emergency and operating rooms, community, rural, and urban environments. Clinical skills and reasoning, basic science material and Thread concepts are reinforced and applied. Phase IV is Advanced Studies, which includes a sub-internship, residency preparation, coursework and a scholarly project integrating advanced basic science and clinical skills.

Phase III (student selects order of clerkships)

Care of the Hospitalize Adult
Operative and Perioperative Care
Infant, Child & Adolescent Health Musculoskeletal Care
Neurologic Care Mental Health
Rural & Community Care Ambulatory Primary Care of the Adult
Urgent Care & Emergency Medicine Women & Newborns

PHASE IV (Entire fourth year)

Advanced Studies is an individually designed curriculum that includes a variety of advanced clinical rotations and elective courses. This final phase prepares students to enter residency programs and encourages synthesis of advanced basic science applications and clinical practice. In addition, the students present the culmination of their four-year scholarly efforts in the Capstone Celebration. The Capstone Celebration is a campus-wide forum where students present their scholarly projects and students and faculty can recognize their achievements.