Mary Lee

Assoc Provost; Dean for Medical Educ
Tufts University
Belmont, Massachusetts,
UNITED STATES

Biography

Dr. Mary Y. Lee is Associate Provost for Tufts University and the Dean for Educational Affairs at the School of Medicine. As Associate Provost, Dr. Lee is responsible for multidisciplinary educational initiatives, faculty development programs, and information technology initiatives that span Tufts’ seven schools: the School of Arts & Sciences; the School of Engineering; the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy; the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, and the Dental and Medical Schools (the latter including the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences). Dr. Lee provides key academic leadership for the Information Technology Council, the University Committee on Teaching and Faculty Development, and the university’s five libraries, overseeing the three main library entities—the University Library Council, University Library Technology Services, and Digital Collections and Archives. As Dean for Educational Affairs, Dr. Lee is responsible for the centralized management and administration, and comprehensive evaluation of the medical school curriculum. She oversees the pre-clinical and clinical curriculum, working with faculty to develop innovative curricular programs and processes. Under her guidance, the medical school has achieved horizontal (within an academic year) and vertical (across years) integration of system-based course content; integration of Problem-based Learning with other courses and clerkships; standardized training for physical examination skills; and Objective Structured Clinical Examinations for fourth-year medical students. Dr. Lee has been a principal player in the development and implementation of the national award-winning Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase (TUSK) (previously known as Tufts Health Sciences Database, see Academic Medicine 2003;78:254-264), a comprehensive, database-driven, content and information management system that combines the strengths of a digital library, curriculum delivery tools, and curriculum management for Tufts’ four health sciences schools. Dr. Lee is also responsible for the medical school’s faculty development programs with particular interest in how to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and to improve classroom learning and clinical teaching with information technology tools. Starting in 2004, Dr. Lee has led the Tufts team in joining Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative . OCW is a large-scale, web-based electronic publishing site that offers the world free access to certain course content. This network of complementary educational materials from higher education — including public health, health sciences, humanities, science and engineering — provides a rich resource for the global community of educators and learners around the world. As project steward, Dr. Lee was awarded funding for Tufts OCW by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Dr. Lee is also the principal investigator on several private and federally-funded educational grants, including a $1.5 million, 5-year grant from the NIH/National Center for Complementary.and Alternative Medicine, to develop and implement an enhanced four-year curriculum that provides an evidence-based approach to integrating complementary and alternative medicine into the allopathic educational program. Dr. Lee received her MD from Tufts University School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, MA. She is board certified in internal medicine and geriatrics. Dr. Lee has served on many national committees devoted to medical education including serving as a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Steering Committee for the Group on Educational Affairs, chair of the Northeast Group on Educational Affairs, member of the AAMC Advisory Committee on the Definition of Underrepresented Minorities, and an invited member of the Centers f