Last fall, my understanding of the history of the Queen’s School of Medicine changed when I learned that, in 1918, we had put in place a policy to formally ban Black students. This policy was approved in a motion by the Queen’s Senate, and it was enforced until 1965.

For some time now, those of us who work in medical education have been speaking about the “hidden curriculum.” The hidden curriculum refers to the many different things – ideas, behaviours, norms, values, and so on – that students learn informally while they are in medical school. These are the lessons that faculty members do not set out to explicitly teach students but that we pass on nonetheless.

Last year, the Faculty of Health Sciences welcomed Cortney Clark to our staff as our new Indigenous Access and Recruitment Coordinator. In this role, Cortney is doing the very important work of helping Indigenous students find their way into health sciences programs, navigate the university once they’ve arrived and ultimately thrive in their time here at Queen’s.