A perpetual problem experienced with the administration is complete unwillingness to share important information with the students. The latest example comes from a May 18th meeting with Dr. Kuchera and Dean Gaber and SGA representatives. The day previous, administration (specifically Dean Kuchera) sent letters to the clinical faculty essentially asking them whether or not they would be teaching this Summer. This was a significant event in the process no matter how you look at it. The document requires all parties to commit to a course of action without negotiations or communication. The students thought they should begin the meeting by asking Dean Kuchera if anything new had happened in the last few days to see if he would share the information from his point of view. He said nothing had happened. Once again, we asked him if he had heard about any letter being sent from administration to the instructors asking them if they were going to be teaching or not. Dean Kuchera said he had heard nothing of the sort. Once again we told him that we positively knew of such a letter being sent to the clinical faculty and that we wished to know the intent of the letter. Dean Kuchera finally said that he did know of a letter being sent to the clinical faculty. Finally, a student pressed for specific information and we slowly dragged the information out of Dean Kuchera. He proceeded to minimize the situation and try to explain away his lack of forthright speech. This is a common practice for many members of administration, especially since this time of unrest began.
Disregard for Student Privacy
Another perfect example of why students do not feel they can trust members of administration is the fact that confidential student information was passed between members of administration despite repeated requests from students that it not be passed. The student had spent two months working on their own OTM survey and had done everything in their power to create a professional presentation. We wanted to keep the information completely confidential until the presentation was finished. Out of respect to Dean Gaber, we made him and Dan Martin (the SGA advisors) privy to information only a select group of students had seen to that point during a practice run of our presentation. I personally asked both Dan Martin and Ron Gaber, repeatedly, to keep this information confidential and share it with no one. Shortly thereafter, Dean Kuchera called me to his office for a meeting and told me he was concerned about the content of the SGA OTM survey. Much to my surprise, he proceeded to give me detailed information about some results of the survey. He told me that Dean Gaber had emailed the information to him. When confronted with this information, Dean Gaber said that he did not share the information with Dean Kuchera and that his statements were not true.
Misinformation as to why KCOM is Losing Clinical Faculty
When asked why valued clinical faculty members were leaving KCOM, Dean Kuchera made the statement in front of a student assembly that a member of clinical faculty was leaving due to her negative experience with students. On several occasions, that faculty member and her husband have denied this is the case and have given very different reasons for their departure. First, one of them received a very attractive offer for a post in another state. Second, the promises made by administration in regard to their responsibilities while employed by the school were never fulfilled. Third, one of the faculty members claimed they had received flak from Dean Kuchera for completing an ACGME residency rather than an AOA approved internship and residency. Whatever the excuses offered by administration, the fact is that, in one year, we have lost two highly skilled physicians who were excited about teaching and could have added to the greatness of KCOM.
