Jane M. Neill, Associate Dean for Medical Education Planning and Administration, is the chief administrative officer for the Program in Medical Education (PME), which comprises the MD curriculum; governance, finance, and policy; MD admissions; curriculum management; and medical student services at Harvard Medical School (HMS). A graduate of Wellesley College, Ms. Neill has been a member of the HMS staff since 1984. She joined the New Pathway Project, an experimental MD curriculum, in 1985, and staffed the planning of the New Pathway clinical curriculum and subsequently the School’s clinical education program.
The Program in Medical Education, under the Dean for Medical Education, was formally established in 1992, and as Academic Administrator for the PME, Ms. Neill worked with the Dean for Medical Education and the Council of Society Masters to establish the Academic Societies as the framework for students’ academic experiences at HMS. From 1996–2001, she served as Assistant Faculty Dean for Academic Programs and Academic Program Director for the Shapiro Institute for Education and Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. In 2000, Ms. Neill was the first recipient of the James Wiczai Award for Leadership, Excellence and Innovation in Medical Education, given to a staff member who fosters innovation and excellence in medical education and promotes collaboration between Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-affiliated hospitals.
She was appointed Deputy Director of the Academy at Harvard Medical School in 2001, and worked with the Academy’s faculty director and founding members to establish the Academy to support the central role of teaching at HMS and the development and enhancement of the teaching skills of the School’s community of teachers. In this role, she also served as senior staff to the Task Force for a New Curriculum, charged with making recommendations about the reform of the four-year MD curriculum, particularly the third-year clinical curriculum. In 2003, she was promoted to Associate Dean for Academic Programs in Medical Education and assumed administrative oversight of the Medical Education Reform Initiative, a multi-year planning process that culminated in HMS’s New Integrated Curriculum and a new clinical year model, the Principal Clinical Experience (PCE), launched in 2006.
In 2005, she was appointed Associate Dean for Medical Education Planning and Administration in the Program in Medical Education and assumed administrative oversight of all components of the MD program at HMS, working with the Dean for Medical Education. In this role, she has been involved in several major renovations of the Tosteson Medical Education Center, including a 7,500 sq. ft. Clinical Skills Center and four three-room Learning Suites to support Case-Based Collaborative Learning (CBCL). She has also worked closely with the Dean for Medical Education in the redesign and implementation of the four-year MD curriculum, Pathways.