More than three decades in the cultivation and advancement of academic exceptionalism define the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM).
The road to our future always begins in our past; and as the years have taught us, the task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.
It is with that surety that LECOM is proud to celebrate the achievement of a significant milestone: the receipt of a successful 10-year AOA-COCA accreditation renewal for its medical school. This noteworthy triumph recognizes the LECOM dedication to academic excellence, to innovative teaching, and to an enduring commitment to shaping the future of healthcare. From its genesis, the LECOM mission was built upon this premise.
Through a peerless amalgam of educational rigor, compassionate care, community service, and the profound purpose of the healing arts and the medical sciences, the academic excellence embraced by LECOM has blended these abiding principles into an educational paradigm unlike that of any other institution of its kind.
LECOM has long set out to define who we are, standing strongly through the tempests of tumult and change in the field of medicine to become both the largest medical school in the nation and its only osteopathic academic health center.
Throughout the upward course of this 32-year journey of expansion and excellence, LECOM has marked the exceptional efforts of our community of students, faculty, staff, and administration. For it is not only in the size of its student body that LECOM has burgeoned and succeeded, but also in its ability to foster lasting and meaningful partnerships with healthcare providers and communities.
The innovative medical school curriculum – one which emphasizes patient-centered care, clinical skills, and hands-on learning – has equipped scholars with the tools to become highly-competent, compassionate, and truly skilled physicians.
LECOM has taught, and continues to teach, the pursuit of wisdom, the pursuit of virtue, and the value of the human spirit. In fact, many LECOM graduates are eager to note that they are not the same upon completion of their LECOM experience; a revelation that they approvingly discern.
As LECOM celebrates this tremendous achievement, the institution remains focused upon the future, nurturing knowledge and curiosity. The depth and breadth of such knowledge does more than settle a question in one’s mind; it promotes new arenas of exploration. It generates new questions, and it promotes new lines of inquiry. The freedom of exceptionalism – the sort that LECOM advances and defends – is freedom to practice these virtues. It is freedom to pursue excellence and the freedom that enables one to master oneself. It is a freedom that, far from being daunted by the rigorous standards of scholarship, demands them.
The LECOM 10-year accreditation milestone stands not only as a testament to its academic exactitude and commitment to excellence, but also as a manifestation of the enduring legacy that is LECOM – a legacy of producing exceptional physicians who venture forth to make lasting contributions in the medical field.
The path ahead for LECOM in the charge of this noble calling, is filled with great passion, with uncommon dedication, and with deep purpose.
Indeed, LECOM in the next decade, promises to deliver further success for its students and alumni as advancements in medical education, community involvement, and a continued focus upon preparing the next generation of osteopathic physicians carries us forward in triumph.