From Aron’s Desk

Friends, 

First off, let me thank my brilliant spouse, Alice Dreger, PhD, for stepping in for me last week to rescue the update from post vacation zombies. Sometimes a week can lead me to haver on, which does not lend itself to a useful update. 

This week, many members of our 2026 entering class matriculated and began their classes. Yep, summer is over, although don’t try telling that to the Southside and the White Sox. I’m not just pulling the lariat of Cubs fans, school is in session. Our own team started thinking ahead back in the winter of 2025, and developed a program to decompress our fall curricula and begin classes in the summer. I’ve seen this work well elsewhere as a way to help students adjust to the heavy load of health professions education. 

Very few institutions had the combination of planning, nimble structures, and incredibly hardworking staff and faculty to pull this off in time for the 2026 academic year. There is not a good way to survey the institutions across our land, but this is one of the most impressive  innovations in the country this year. You can check out last week’s Town Hall on our effort, but the short summary is that compared with years past, we have filled our classes faster and more efficiently, attracting students with the range of experiences and academic rigor to which we are accustomed.

This work all began well before I joined, and I am impressed by the foresight and fortitude it took to do this. While the focus of our effort is academic, this innovation also helps our students avoid some of the complications of HR 1, although the government’s system will still reduce the borrowing capacity of students who take a leave for medical or disability reasons. 

As I mentioned, Alice gave me an assist last week, and she asked me to remind you all of the opportunity being offered virtually via the Boxer Library next Tuesday, June 23, from noon to 2 pm: “Drawn Together: Building Empathy & Compassion through Graphic Medicine.” It’s a chance to learn more about – and develop your skills in – Graphic Medicine, a field which combines the methodologies of comics, narrative medicine, and communications. The workshop will be led by Dr. Brian Callender of University of Chicago Medicine, who teaches Graphic Medicine at the U of C with Alice’s former masters student, MK Czerwiec, better known as Comic Nurse. RFU’s Education & Curriculum librarian Claressa Slaughter will also be presenting at the event. This is a great way to stretch your brain to make it more tasty for the summertime zombies. Learn more here.

Today is Juneteenth, which finally became a national holiday in 2021. Some of our residents, faculty, staff, security folks, and clinical students will be working on the holiday, but there are no classes or meetings. So, here on campus, we celebrated Juneteenth a bit early on the 17th. There was great food and fellowship with a student in our excellent Physician Assistant program, Cayla Adams, leading us as our speaker. Americans across the land celebrate and aspire to freedom. Juneteenth may be our most remarkable holiday for its specific celebration of victory over oppression. We celebrate the long awaited, then partial, then denied, then final end of chattel slavery through bloody, bloody war. Astonishing. Too many still struggle in ways obvious and obscured. So, we have to keep working, celebrating, talking to our neighbors, and doing our best in the pursuit of happiness.

Improving the wellness of all people with you, 

Aron