Our Values, Our Actions
KansasCOM is committed to cultivating an academic community in which all students, faculty, staff, and leadership:
- Value differences and seek to understand before being understood.
- Create a positive culture to safeguard inclusion, dignity, and respect for all.
- Strive to understand what other people are experiencing and use that understanding to solve problems and to drive positive change.
- Act and lead in a manner that reflects inclusiveness, dignity, and respect for others.
- Build a safe and inclusive environment that promotes diversity of ideas and people.
- Solicit, seek, embrace, and adopt diverse thoughts and opinions.
- Create a learning culture that promotes honesty, sincerity, reflection, awareness, and inquiry.
In addition, the institution reinforces for its students, faculty, and staff the importance that diversity and inclusion plays in our development as an organization and community.
Chester I. Lewis Reflection Park
The Chester I. Lewis Reflection Park serves as the entrance to KansasCOM. Lewis, who was born in 1929, was the president of the Wichita chapter of the NAACP and worked tirelessly to desegregate restaurants, swimming pools, aircraft companies, and local governmental agencies. The recognition of Lewis’ efforts stands as an ongoing reminder for our students to be brave, stand up for what’s right, and to have the vision and courage to make a positive difference in health care.
Making an Impact Together
As future physicians, students must understand and embrace cultural diversity to be competent and successful in their educational and professional careers. As experienced practitioners and mentors to our students, KansasCOM’s faculty and staff must do the same. We aim to prepare KansasCOM students to serve diverse, underserved, at-risk, urban, and rural populations within geographically diverse communities in the state of Kansas and nationwide. Understand more about KansasCOM’s effort to cultivate diversity and inclusion on campus by contacting the Office of Student Affairs and Services.
Conscientiously Constructed Curriculum
Our unique curriculum provides students with valuable exposure to issues that impact public health in the U.S. every day. With deeper exploration into gender and racial disparities in health care, issues unique to the LGBTQIA+ community, clinical communication skills with diverse patients, and much more, KansasCOM’s curriculum has been constructed with dedication to helping students excel as culturally competent physicians in a world of ever-increasing diversity.
Community and Service
KansasCOM is committed to providing a variety of services to the greater Wichita area, including outreach to underserved communities. Our location at the heart of Wichita positions us perfectly to serve as a focal point for the continued revitalization of the downtown area.
Additionally, KansasCOM students invest themselves in the greater Wichita metropolitan area, through a variety of community service projects focusing on underrepresented populations during their time as medical students.
