Barbara Ross-Lee, D.O., the former dean of OU-COM, returned to lecture to students and faculty during Minority Health Month Thursday. Ross-Lee is currently vice president for Health Sciences and Medical Affairs at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) and dean of the NYIT New York College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYCOM). This was her first return to the college since leaving in 2001.

“I’m primed to see what the changes are, but it’s like coming home. It’s like coming home for a holiday,” Ross-Lee said.

Twelve years ago, Ross-Lee became the first African-American woman to head an American medical school. While at the college, she oversaw radical changes to the school’s curriculum, transforming it from a lecture-based, faculty-directed model to a problem-based, student-centered model (which includes two curricular tracks) and the established the CORE system, then known as the Centers for Osteopathic Regional Education. Some have referred to her as a “change agent.”

There are three goals this change agent is focused on at NYCOM.

“Most of what I’m doing in New York is different because it has a different set of issues. Our school didn’t have a community presence. A lot of what I’m doing is to increase the visible presence of the health profession programs,” she said.

“Most of the people on Long Island don’t even know the medical school is there. A lot of my effort is around increasing the visibility of the school in Nassau County and the state.

“Of equal importance is curriculum revision, which is critical. We’re implementing a new curriculum this fall. The new class starts Aug. 22. We’re in the last six months of structuring this new curriculum. Everyday for two to four hours we’re working on curriculum. It’s going to be a model, and we’re hoping to be able to present it in November at the American Association of Medical Colleges.

“Third is to change the culture for the students — to make it a much more pro-active, dynamic environment that students can thrive in. To make it more student centered.

“Also we’re beginning to raise issues of interdisciplinary concerns; we have a very interesting mix of health profession disciplines. That effort has taken more time, because each of profession has challenges that must be addressed first. For instance, there’s a nursing shortage. That means we have to deal with nursing issues separately from the other health profession issues in order to be able to build a stronger clinical base for training to attract faculty.”

Before her noon lecture, that morning she spoke to a group of medical students in Grosvenor West 111.

She recalled her trek through College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University at a time, she said, when there were very few minorities in osteopathic medicine and very, very few women as well.

“My experience was that I had people who were very committed to all the osteopathic students at Michigan State being successful,” she said. “I had the experience of what it meant to have professional commitment to your success, which is something that you all have right now,” she told the students.

“What it builds is this desire to give back, not to just take it and go your own way and do your own thing.”

But as a black female, she said, there was very little expected of her, but she learned to set her own standard of excellence and success. She said she didn’t allow herself to be “put in a box” with standards of achievement so low so that at best she would be only mediocre.

“That was my motivation,” she said. Likewise she told the assembled students that they should set their own standard of excellence by persistently pushing themselves to be better and expanding their knowledge.

“You can only be good — and each and every one of you can be good — if you know what you don’t know and if you address it over and over again.”

She turned from individual competence to cultural competency, a topic on which she speaks with particular conviction and understanding.

“I went through medical school thinking that because I was a minority I was culturally competent, but it wasn’t true. We all need to take lessons in cultural competency.

“We all have biases, and those biases are formed out of our cultural exposure.”

It’s not something you take personally, she said. You shouldn’t be threatened by it, but you have to recognize it. If you accept that we view all things through our particular cultural perspective and are willing to address that, then you can become culturally competent.

That willingness, she said, “makes you examine every decision you make. The yardstick I use is that I’m going to treat every patient that comes to me the same way. If female, I will treat her as if she were my mother; if male, as I would my father; if a child, as I would one of my children.

“That has to be your standard. If you want to want to go into medicine, you better be willing to modify your ‘culture’ to engage the patient. If you can’t do that, this is the wrong place to be. It’s not your job to change them.

If you find that you can’t help a patient, it’s your job to determine if there is someone else who can help him or her, she said.

“Is there someone else that I can send them to that might be able to engage them and get them to a different place? That’s what are jobs are — we’re service professionals. We help people.”

She also spoke of the three fond memories she has of OU-COM.

“There’s two recurring events that I really, really loved,” she said. “The first was the White Coat Ceremony. I loved the White Coat Ceremony. It’s such a wonderful time for students.”

The second was graduation, she said. She adoringly spoke of the pictures she still holds near and dear of hooding students at graduation.

“Another was Talent Follies. All the females in the college had a dance troupe and we performed onstage for the talent show. That is a fond memory, but I hope you burned that videotape.

“What I enjoyed the most was we worked very hard to do some really wonderful things. We laughed and we had a good time. I hope that students had a good time, too. You do not have to survive medical school. If you have to survive it, we’re doing something wrong. Medical school is where you flourish, where you blossom.”

Sharon Zimmerman, director of alumni affairs, attended the morning session.

“Barbara is an inspiration,” Zimmerman says. “She always challenged us to think outside the box — to look for new and creative ways of doing things that would move the college and its program forward.”

Zimmerman says Ross-Lee was equally inspiring for students as well. “She connects so well with students,” she says.

“Her visit was a reminder of the eight years we had working with her. We had a lot of fun. We laughed a lot but we worked really hard.

“Barbara has a lot of vitality, and she managed to accomplish a lot with a somewhat limited staff here. We all pulled together to achieve the great things that we did.

“It was refreshing to have her come home.”