Building the Future of Health Professions Education: Curriculum Development in Dental and Pharmacy Programs
In a recent Enflux webinar, “Navigating Curriculum Transformation: Insights and Strategies from Health Professions Leaders”, Dr. Erinne Kennedy (Kansas City University College of Dental Medicine) and Dr. Catherine Cone (Touro University College of Pharmacy) joined Enflux to share their firsthand experiences with curriculum development, revision, and assessment.
Whether building a new program from scratch or transforming an established one, both leaders reveal how strategic design, faculty support, and learning analytics solutions like Enflux and technology can shape meaningful change.
Starting fresh or starting over: the challenges of curriculum development
Enflux: Let’s start with the big picture. What was the biggest challenge for you in curriculum development?
Dr. Erinne Kennedy: When starting a new curriculum, two big questions come up: how are you going to be innovative, and how are you going to measure that? With a blank canvas, you have to declutter what’s been built up over the years elsewhere. At new schools, we become pilot spaces to create something contemporary—fully integrated between biomedical and clinical sciences. Along the way, we wanted to make sure we could track our decisions and use data. That’s where tools like Enflux’s curriculum map have been so helpful…having a way to map and measure competencies gives us evidence to share with colleagues and keep our curriculum aligned with our goals.
Dr. Catherine Cone: I came into a program that was already distinctive—it was the only 2+2 in the country, with two years of didactic learning and two years of clinical education. So we didn’t face the challenge other schools do when trying to compress years of didactics. But we still had to gather consensus and move things forward. We created a curricular change task force with motivated faculty from both the science and practice departments, and we met weekly—often with additional work in between. We also brought in a consultant, who told us she hadn’t seen a program change as quickly as ours. I think that speaks to the momentum we had and the willingness of the faculty to embrace the change.
Integrating clinical and didactic education
Enflux: Let’s talk about integrating clinical and didactic components. How did you make sure nothing was lost during the redesign?
Dr. Catherine Cone: We introduced OSCE-style assessments, which we called happiness readiness assessments. These targeted the specific skills our experiential preceptors told us students struggled with when transitioning to rotations. We tied the assessments directly to our program competencies and EPA expectations, embedding them into both the first and second years. Students cannot move on to their APPEs unless they pass.
If they don’t, we have a structured process designed to help at risk students succeed. First, they reassess after receiving feedback on strengths and weaknesses. If competency is still not reached, they enter remediation, and in rare cases may even need to retake a course in the summer. It’s a heavy lift for faculty, especially in the skills lab, which is why we recently expanded staffing and built labs into nearly every course to ensure consistency and active learning across the curriculum.
But the payoff is significant: by the time students reach rotations, we’re confident they have the foundation to succeed.
Dr. Erinne Kennedy: What’s interesting is how similar that approach is to what we do in dental education. At the end of each term, we hold an academic advance, where course directors present evaluation and achievement data. That feedback is reviewed by our college’s curriculum management committee and then by the university-wide committee, which creates a rigorous cycle of review and innovation.
One example is when we discovered—through Enflux learning analytics dashboards—that students weren’t getting enough simulation time. In response, we added additional SIM sessions, hired more tutors, and redesigned two first-year clinical courses to expand experiential learning. We even revised the exercises themselves.
We also phase in clinical exposure gradually: students begin with a half-day in the clinic, then one day, then two, before progressing to full time. This avoids the steep ramp-up that can overwhelm learners. And like Catherine described, we rely on OSCEs to reinforce skills before students move into community-based clinical sites. It’s really about layering clinical experiences in a thoughtful, data-driven way, so students gain competence step by step rather than all at once.
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Faculty buy‑In in curriculum development
Enflux: Faculty buy-in is often one of the biggest hurdles in curriculum reform. How did you gain faculty support during these changes?
Dr. Erinne Kennedy: The best way to gain faculty support is by using the curriculum itself to address their concerns and build consensus. One challenge with a new program is that the initial curriculum is often designed by administrators before faculty are even hired. At KCU, that meant the first year had to follow the plan already in place. Now, in our second year, we’re shifting toward a model where faculty provide feedback at the end of each term, and we adjust accordingly. When faculty see their input reflected in real changes, it builds stronger buy-in.
Another factor is technology. Health professions education relies on so many systems—LMS platforms, exam software, rubric tools, clinical tracking programs—and that can be overwhelming. To support faculty, we’ve focused on consistent training and rapid troubleshooting so they don’t feel burdened by the tools. Listening to their concerns while also providing real-time support has been key to building trust and engagement.
Dr. Catherine Cone: For us, the curriculum committee is central to gaining faculty support. Before a course begins, the coordinators present their syllabus to the committee, which includes faculty from across departments as well as students. We review what worked and what didn’t in prior years and make recommendations for improvements. After the course ends, we repeat the process with post-course feedback from both students and faculty. That continuous quality improvement cycle has created a culture where faculty expect to review and reflect, rather than seeing it as an extra burden.
To manage workload, we’ve moved to a rotation system—reviewing first-year courses in odd years, second-year courses in even years, and experiential education on a four-year cycle. This keeps the process robust without overwhelming faculty. We also use student feedback from teaching evaluations, curriculum committee representatives, and even town halls we hold after major exam periods. That combination helps us capture an honest picture of what’s working, without putting students in direct conflict with faculty.
Curriculum development wins
Enflux: Curriculum development is challenging, but it also creates opportunities for success. What would you say has been your biggest win so far—and what trade-offs have you had to make along the way?
Dr. Erinne Kennedy: For me, the biggest win has been having real-time student data at my fingertips. Each week I report to our Student Progress Committee, ranking students as at-risk, vulnerable, or thriving. In the past, doing this in Excel would have taken two weeks—and by the time the report was ready, the data was already outdated. With Enflux, I can generate the report instantly, review it in real time, and focus on supporting students instead of wrestling with spreadsheets.
It’s also been a huge help for accreditation and institutional effectiveness reporting. Just last week, I had to prepare a multi-page accreditation document. Using Enflux, I was able to pull exactly what I needed and finish in about 90 minutes. Without that data, it would have taken me weeks. That kind of efficiency is a massive win for both faculty time and student success.
Dr. Catherine Cone: My biggest win is directly tied to my doctoral research. I’m completing an EdD focused on how competency-based education impacts students from underserved backgrounds. We just completed our first-year analysis, and the results were dramatic—progression rates improved significantly. That’s huge for us, because it shows our curriculum is not only working for the general student population but also making a measurable difference for those who have historically struggled.
It’s incredibly rewarding to see evidence that competency-based education helps close equity gaps while also raising performance across the board. For our students, our faculty, and our program, that’s a tremendous success.
Case Study
Learn more how Kansas City University College of Dental Medicine created space for curricular creativity while using data to anchor outcomes and meet accreditation benchmarks
The role of educational technology in curriculum development and assessment
Enflux: You’ve both shared how Enflux has supported your curriculum changes. How critical do you find educational technology in supporting curriculum development and assessment?
Dr. Catherine Cone: Just yesterday, my data coordinator sent out results from our latest graduating student and preceptor surveys. We pulled the data directly from Enflux, complete with beautiful graphs comparing our outcomes to peers and national benchmarks. We shared it immediately with experiential faculty and the assessment committee, giving them a clear picture of strengths and areas for improvement.
Before Enflux, that process took hours—building slides manually, formatting charts, and compiling reports. Now it’s instant, which means our time is spent addressing issues, not formatting data.
Dr. Erinne Kennedy: In dentistry, our challenge looks a little different. Right now there are about 700 open faculty positions across U.S. dental schools, so we’re constantly recruiting and working to bring more people into dental education. That makes educational technology essential.
I think about EdTech in terms of how it supports faculty: Does it make their workflow more efficient? Does it save them from spending an entire semester crunching numbers? The tools we’ve implemented in the College of Dental Medicine not only enhance student learning, they also make faculty processes easier and more efficient. In some cases, they can even replace the workload of a full FTE. That’s critical in helping us do more with limited resources while still maintaining quality education.
Accreditation as the framework
Enflux: Accreditation is a major factor in curriculum reform. How did you consider accreditation in your curricular decisions—was it integrated from the start, or something you planned to address later?
Dr. Catherine Cone: In pharmacy, accreditation really drives so many of our decisions because our competencies are our standards. All of the educational competencies come directly from accreditation requirements, so everything we teach has to map back to them. We also work from Appendix 1, which is a detailed list of topical areas that must be covered across the curriculum. That means our curriculum mapping isn’t optional—it’s essential to demonstrating alignment.
We also emphasize progression through Bloom’s taxonomy—moving students from knowledge, to application, to higher-order thinking, and then into experiential education. That developmental growth is a key expectation of accreditation and something I’m particularly passionate about. And with the new EPAs being introduced as part of the ACPE Standards 2025, that alignment between competencies and entrustable professional activities will become even more critical for pharmacy education.
Dr. Erinne Kennedy: Accreditation shapes dental education in much the same way. When we designed our curriculum, we began with the accreditation standards and used them as the foundation for a backward design approach. That helped us declutter and ensure that every assessment and rubric was tagged to the required standards—what we call the “must statements.”
At the same time, we also integrated best practices and innovative elements that aren’t yet explicitly in the standards but are becoming common in the field. I think of accreditation as the framework. Within that framework, our responsibility is to innovate in ways that enhance student learning. For us at KCU, accreditation wasn’t an afterthought—it was the starting point and guiding structure for building a new program.
The experiences of Dr. Erinne Kennedy and Dr. Catherine Cone highlight that curriculum development in higher education requires intentional design, faculty engagement, and continuous alignment with accreditation standards. By leveraging real-time student data, structured faculty feedback, and evidence-based practices, both institutions create innovative, competency-driven learning environments that prepare students for success in clinical and professional settings.
At the center of these efforts is the ability to make data-informed decisions. Learning analytics and curriculum management software systems like Enflux provide the evidence and efficiency needed to streamline curriculum development processes, enhance student outcomes, and sustain long-term program quality in higher education.
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