VCOM College Catalog and Student Handbook

Attendance/Hours of Duty Policy

Observed Holidays VCOM observes the following holidays (certain holidays falling on the weekend will be observed either on the Friday before the holiday or the Monday after the holiday):

Holiday

Date

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Third Monday in January

Memorial Day

Last Monday in May

Independence Day

July 4

1 st Monday in September 4th Thursday in November Friday after Thanksgiving December 24 – January 1

Labor Day

Thanksgiving Day

Day After Thanksgiving

Winter Break

Attendance Requirements for OMS 1 and OMS 2 Students VCOM creates a variety of venues to support high quality learningand teaching, which the attendance policy strives to support by honoring students’ varied learning styles and by allowing faculty, Course Directors, and Discipline Chairs to maintain the integrity of the curriculum. While all lectures are recorded and are available on VCOMTV for flexible viewing, VCOM offers many required academic activities that are not captured on VCOM TV including class discussion, interactive sessions, I-Clicker quizzes, flipped classroom experiences, group discussions, laboratory experiences, and skills development activities. Participation in many of these activities; therefore, requires regular attendance in order to benefit from the full academic program. In addition, VCOM recognizes that professional development occurs in the classroom, laboratory, and clinical environments. Students develop the skills to interact professionally with their colleagues, with the faculty including medical specialists, and to develop a dutiful attitude, which is integral to success to enter a medical residency program and subsequent medical practice. The administration and faculty of VCOM embrace the belief that the culture of medicine requires duty, professionalism, integrity, compassion, altruism, medical knowledge, and critical thinking, which are core to the environment of medical learning whether in the classroom or the clinical setting. These are the professional reasons for the VCOM attendance requirement. Learning activities at VCOM for the OMS 1 and 2 years have been designated as either Mandatory Learning Activities or Asynchronous Learning Activities and will be identified as such on the block calendars. It is the student’s responsibility to be aware of the designations of learning activities to ensure proper attendance. Most Mandatory Learning Activities require a minimum of acceptable attendance of 70% in each block; however, some Mandatory Learning Activities require 100% attendance. 100% attendance is required for laboratory sessions or other clinical laboratories or activities (anatomy lab, PPC/OMM lab, clinical procedural skills lab, microbiology lab, ICC sessions, ECEs, SGLs, and case-based learning) and all examinations. For the Mandatory Learning Activities that require a minimum of 70% attendance per block, the 30% of allowable absences is calculated by multiplying .30 by the number of mandatory lectures in the block.

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