Dear Students, Faculty, Staff, Friends, Members of the ELC, and NSU community:

As we welcome the New Year, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your dedication, hard work, support, and collaborative mindset, which made 2023 the most impactful and rewarding year in our medical school’s young history. I am further grateful to our healthcare and community partners, especially the physicians who helped us shape our legacy curriculum and serve as clerkship directors, department chairs, and preceptors for our students.

The 2023 achievement of full LCME accreditation was a pivotal milestone in the history of our medical College and for Nova Southeastern University as a whole, delivering on our promise to build a world class medical school committed to train a new generation of physician leaders and build the health care workforce of the future.

The College’s continued progress can be attributed to its collaborative culture, resilience, and its capability for continually adapting to the ever-changing demands of academic medicine. Despite the pandemic, and on top of the numerous stressors that new medical schools typically face, we have met or exceeded goals, including reaching full LCME accreditation, surpassing projected enrollment and research funding targets, and exceeding national educational quality benchmarks.

Full LCME accretion status is not just a token of educational quality; rather, it mandates a collective responsibility to think ahead and chart a new, exciting path forward, one that ensures the College remains on track achieving sustainable progress and meeting its core objectives now and in the future.

Now is the time to begin unlocking and realizing the full potential of the medical school, to capitalize on many untapped growth opportunities, and to scale up in size, impact and value at the university, regional and national level. Careful strategic planning and scaling of our missions without compromising quality will be key to our collective success.

During the summer/fall of 2023, we met on many occasions and asked powerful questions about what matters most for the medical school, its students, faculty, and our community moving forward. We all agreed that the progress of this medical school should not only be based on reaching professional goals, but – importantly – about how we can deliver our objectives by manifesting a culture in which people feel valued, have the opportunity to thrive and excel, care for themselves and each other, and celebrate all forms of progress.

Using a data-driven strategy, we all came together, collected, and systematically analyzed environmental and internal factors to compile an initial framework for the College’s new post- accreditation strategic plan, termed “Inspire – Impact – Transform”. After collecting all stakeholder feedback, responses were re-framed and re-organized into strategic pillars, each with clear objectives, tactics, and metrics. Now, after further refinements, the plan has evolved into a comprehensive strategic playbook that embodies the College’s collective goals and strategies for the period beginning July 2024, and ending around the time of the College’s first LCME re-accreditation survey in FY 2029/30.

The College’s “Inspire – Impact – Transform” vision is built around seven strategic pillars and steeped in developing a culture of “smart” growth, a commitment to excellence in all missions, achieving meaningful outcomes, becoming a leader in innovation, while always honoring our core values. Through this new College vision, we seek to INSPIRE all learners to make a difference in the world by creating IMPACT on people’s lives that TRANSFORM communities toward a healthier future. The plan will create a distinctive College identity, set priorities, and facilitate ownership for each goal so our teams can embrace a commitment to shared success.

Among our college’s greatest assets is the reputation we have built as a non-traditional, resilient, and agile 21st century medical school. We have earned trust and respect as a medical College with transformative potential and value. This potential and the school’s future impact were recognized early on by generous visionaries, none more so than Dr. Kiran Patel and his amazing family whose legacy gift was the catalyst for bringing President George Hanbury’s long time vision for an Allopathic Medical School at NSU to full fruition. Now moving forward, “Inspire – Impact – Transform” was deliberately designed to be well aligned with a future NSU Health Vision – to build an integrated health organization of the highest quality and to advance the entire university be recognized as a leader in higher education, discovery, and the delivery of healthcare.

It goes without saying that our new strategic plan to “Inspire – Impact – Transform” cannot be accomplished unless we all come together, lead by example, and build a tight-knit family of faculty, staff, students, and supporters determined to become the drivers of the College’s impact, value, reputation, and success. My role as dean is to facilitate the implementation and outcomes of our new strategic plan, build a culture of mutual respect, develop faculty leadership, and work with partners to establish academic and clinical environments wherein faculty, students and staff can attain their greatest achievements both as individuals and as teams.

Please know how much I appreciate all of you, your knowledge and skills, the impressive work you are doing, and your receptiveness to positive change. I look forward to presenting the new “Inspire — Impact — Transform” strategic plan during the next faculty council meeting, followed by conversations with university leadership and the College’s Executive Leadership Committee before the plan’s roll out through printed and digital materials in the Spring of 2024.

It remains my greatest honor and privilege to serve as your dean, and I am confident 2024 will be another exceptional year for our college and the entire university.

With great affection and unwavering devotion  – Johannes

“The best way to predict your future is to create it” – Abraham Lincoln