Syllabi of Mount Sinai School of Medicine

• 7 boxes (65 inches)
• electronic material

These are the syllabi produced by faculty members of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The copies for the undergraduate medical program were produced and distributed by the Office of Medical Education. The syllabi from the Graduate School of Biological Sciences were distributed by the Dean’s Office. Many of the Archives’ copies of the early years are bound volumes that were created by the Levy Library.

There are two series of records here: syllabi for the undergraduate medical education program and syllabi for the Graduate School of Biological Sciences, today’s Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The MD program syllabi provide information about the curriculum of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and how the subjects were presented to students. The syllabi primarily cover the courses in the first two years of medical school, with very few describing the clerkships found in the final two years. The syllabi for the first four years of the School’s existence are preserved in their entirety to show how the new school structured their coursework. After the early years, the Archives has generally only retained the paper syllabi for new courses as they were introduced. For non-basic science courses, the Archives has preserved a more complete selection of syllabi to illustrate how teaching on topics such as Student Well Being, Medical Ethics, and Sexual Assault has evolved over time. The Archives’ holdings were never complete, so this selection may also be missing items.

In 2012, with the decommissioning of the WebEd learning management system, the Aufses Archives took custody of syllabus content stored in WebEd. All MD course content stored in WebEd was saved, but note that the subset of courses in WebEd may not reflect the entire MD course catalog for any particular year. The level of detail provided by the WebEd content for particular courses varies widely, from simple lecture schedules to elaborate content outlines. These items are arranged chronologically by academic year and span AY 2006-2007 to AY 2010-2011. The electronic collection of syllabus content also includes two additional electronic syllabi from AY 2001-2002 which were received in lieu of paper copies. This collection is a subdivision of the ISMMS Department of Medical Education community.

The syllabi of courses in the Graduate School of Biological Sciences are electronic only. Syllabi from AY 2006-2007 to AY 2010-2011 were downloaded from WebEd during its decommissioning. An additional collection of syllabi from AY 2011-2012 was downloaded from the Blackboard learning management system, which replaced WebEd.

Graduate School courses represented include content from the general PhD program, the Master of Public Health Program (which became the Graduate Program in Public Health in 2013), and the Masters in Clinical Research program. As with the MD syllabi, the Graduate School syllabus collection reflects what was stored in the WebEd and Blackboard systems at the time of retrieval, not the entire course catalog, and the level of detail of the syllabi varies widely. Graduate School syllabi with their associated degree program.

This material may be closed for a minimum of 25 years from creation, depending on their content. Syllabi are restricted. Please contact the Archives (MSArchives@mssm.edu) for additional information.

• English

The Syllabi of Mount Sinai School of Medicine were sent to the Archives from many sources over many years. The bulk of the early collection was transferred from the Levy Library, which had collected and bound the paper syllabi. Over time, the Archives worked with the Department of Medical Education to obtain copies of the syllabi, but it was not possible to acquire a complete set for each year. With the establishment of an online learning management system (WebCT, then WebEd and then Blackboard in 2011), only electronic syllabi were saved. However, the format and quality of these online documents varied greatly. In 2010, the Archives decided to instead collect the course information sheets series to document the curriculum of the School.

In 2018, after 30 years of managing the collection of 39 boxes of material, it was determined that since there had been no use of the collection, there was no justification for keeping the entire series. After a weeding project, a much smaller collection is described here.

In 2018, the collection of paper MD syllabi was weeded substantially to free up shelf space. As part of this process, the finding aid for the collection was expanded to include the electronic MD syllabi from WebEd as well as syllabi from the various Graduate School programs (MPH, MSCR and PhD), all of which are now listed in a single document.

Finding aid created by Barbara Niss in August 2018. Finding aid updated by Nicholas Webb in November 2018.