Discovery Curriculum: Turning Questions into Scholarship

In 2027, rising second-year medical students will participate in the School of Medicine’s Discovery Curriculum, a summer experience designed to promote scientific inquiry and academic investigation. The curriculum gives students a structured opportunity to explore an area of interest while developing the skills to investigate questions relevant to medicine.

Students will choose from a variety of topic areas, such as basic science and clinical research, community engagement, public health, advocacy, and clinical care. With assistance from a mentor, each student will develop an answerable scholarly question. This question will guide the student’s summer work, using an approach appropriate to the topic being explored.

The breadth of these topic areas reflects the many ways students can engage in scholarship in a way that is meaningful and individualized to them. Whether their interests involve biological mechanisms, clinical outcomes, advocacy, or the delivery of care, students will practice moving from curiosity to focused investigation. The experience will emphasize asking questions and exploring them in a systematic way, by selecting suitable methods, evaluating findings, and communicating what they have learned.

All students will submit abstracts summarizing their work and findings. These abstracts will be scored, and students with the highest-scoring abstracts will give either an oral presentation or a poster presentation during Discovery Day in the fall.

Discovery Day will bring this work back to the SOM community, providing an opportunity to share findings and recognize student scholarship across a range of interests and approaches.