Dr. Maurer, Asst. Dean for CHM Admissions, Reveals Solutions Made by Admissions Team in Adapting to Pandemic Via Virtual Interviewing
Among the countless aspects of life disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, one posed a significant problem for the College of Human Medicine: how to continue interviewing students who apply for admission. Until this year, top candidates were invited by the Office of Admissions to our East Lansing or Grand Rapids community campuses for a series of interviews. “I actually thought about this way back at the end of March when I saw that this was not something that was going to go away magically,” said Joel Maurer, MD, the college’s assistant dean for admissions. The answer, he and other administrators decided, was to interview applicants online, which posed multiple technical and logistical obstacles. Before the pandemic, applicants underwent a series of one-on-one interviews with faculty members, each on a specific topic. The college first tried to duplicate that approach online, but it quickly proved unworkable, Maurer said. A better approach was to have each student interviewed through