Quest International University is fully aware that curriculum and educational standards must continually evolve to address the latest developments in technology, new pedagogical research and evolving student learning styles in order to meet international standards.
In its unceasing efforts to evolve and raise the bar in the field of medicine and research, the Faculty of Medicine (FOM) recently hosted two distinguished Professors from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, Professor Dr. Sandy Cook and Professor Dr. Scott Allen Compton who were at the campus to study the MBBS curriculum and its implementation.
Professor Dr. Sandy Cook joined Duke-NUS Medical School in June 2006, as Associate Dean for Curriculum Development and established the Medical Education, Research, and Evaluation Department within the Office of Education (OoE). In 2010, she was promoted to Senior Associate Dean, supporting the Vice Dean in managing OoE. Prof Cook helped establish the Academic Medicine Education Institute (AM•EI) launched in 2012 —designed to promote excellence in education for all Health Professional Educators. In 2014, she was accepted into the NUS Teaching Academy Fellows and received the Master Scholar Award from the International Association of Medical Science Educators in 2016. Prof Cook was appointed Interim Vice Dean and Co-Director of AM•EI in 2016.
Associate Professor Scott Compton holds a PhD in Educational Evaluation & Research and has taught formally at every level, from primary school children to post-graduate students, receiving teaching awards at each level. As a scientist, he has published over 50 peer-reviewed research articles and presented over 100 research presentations at international conferences.
As the Associate Dean for Medical Education, Research and Evaluation at Duke-NUS, he is responsible for the MD curriculum, and quality assurance of the educational programme. Dr. Compton’s interests are in developing collaborative systems to support active-learning educational experiences and comprehensive evidence-based programme evaluations. He has a particular passion for promoting rigourous scientific educational research, drawing extensively on his substantial clinical research experience in Emergency Medicine to help grow and foster productivity in educational research among students, staff, and faculty.
During their visit, both Prof Sandy and Prof Scott spent time meeting the Dean and staff of FOM to review in detail the contents, the teaching methods and assessment approaches. The information gathered in these sessions will be used by them to assist FOM review its curriculum and assessment approaches to get students ready to appear in United States Medical Licensing Examinations (USMLE).
The effort to align medical curriculum to meet global standards is further reinforced when the University inked an MOU with Kaplan Medical earlier which will see Quest International University as the Examination Centre for the Northern region of Malaysia for the USMLE.
This move, besides propelling the medical curriculum to international standards, will also enable International students pursuing their medical studies in Malaysia an avenue to secure their residency in the United States and realize their dreams of becoming a specialist doctor as they are not allowed to pursue their houseman-ship in Malaysia after completing their medical studies here.
Both Prof Sandy and Prof Scott were greatly impressed by the dedicated Faculty and the thoughtfulness that went into the development of present curriculum. They concluded this is a high quality medical programme. They were also impressed by the standard and maturity of the students and were confident that the students at FOM are receiving quality education and will do well in the future.
