CBVE® Newsletter 13 - October 2025

This newsletter focuses on an interview by a CBVE® Outreach member with faculty and educational administrators at an institution where CBVE has been recently implemented. This is the first in a series of highlights on successes and challenges in CBVE adoption.

Participants:


College - University of Wisconsin–Madison's School of Veterinary Medicine

Interviewer - Laura Molgaard

Interviewee - Jim Narlock – Curriculum Manager

Interviewee - Liddy Alvarez – Curriculum Director of OneHealth Access to Care Clinic (WisCARES); Faculty & Professional Skills Course Co-coordinator


Laura: Thanks for joining me today. Could you both start by sharing your roles?

Jim: Sure! I’m the Curriculum Manager.

Liddy: And I’m the Curriculum Director of our OneHealth Access to Care Clinic (WisCARES) and also co-coordinate the Professional Skills course.


Laura: Exciting times—I hear you’ve got a new curriculum about to launch?

Jim: Yes! It launches next week (Fall 2025) and it’s fully built on the CBVE framework.

Liddy: It’s the first full curriculum revision since the school was founded—a huge, multi-year effort.


Laura: What prompted this major overhaul?

Liddy: A site visit pushed us to benchmark against best practices, and we chose CBVE as the anchor.

Jim: The original plan was a full backward design starting from Year 4, but the urgency of the situation meant we had to start with Year 1 and move forward.


Laura: How did CBVE shape the design?

Jim: The competencies and sub-competencies even shaped our committee structure, bringing together both foundational science and clinical faculty.

Liddy: From CBVE, we derived phase-level learning outcomes across four phases—starting with the healthy animal and moving toward the clinical year. Faculty voted on these outcomes, and once approved, they’re fixed.


Laura: So how does that look in practice?

Jim: The curriculum is body-system based in Phases 1 and 2. Faculty co-leads (foundational and clinical sciences) focus on how students demonstrate learning outcomes within those systems.

Liddy: At the session level, outcomes must be explicitly demonstrated. And we’ve developed our own curriculum map that tags learning outcomes, body systems, competencies, and sub-competencies.

Jim: Faculty work with outcomes derived from CBVE, while our Curriculum and Educational Support Team ensures the CBVE mapping is accurate. We’re even exploring AI to support mapping.


Laura: Any particular highlights so far?

Liddy: Yes—When we mapped out our old curriculum, we found some gaps, which we can now address. Fortunately, the student clinical experiences through our WisCARES Community clinic rotation already addressed many of the so-called “hard-to-assess” professional competencies, such as Domain 5.2 "Adapts communication style to diverse audiences", Domain 6.4 "Demonstrates inclusivity and cultural competence", Domain 7.5 "Attends to wellbeing of self and others", Domain 8.1 "Weighs financial factors in personal and business decision-making", as well as all of the new Spectrum of Care (SOC) sub-competencies.

Jim: In the old curriculum, professional skills were siloed in a single course(s) that were marginal and not intentionally integrated. Now, professional competencies are woven throughout all phases both in a separate course and aligned with body system modules.

Liddy: And we had support from the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Management, plus an additional staff member joining our vet school team. We also made sure to include employer and alumni voices to help prioritize what really mattered.


Laura: What challenges have you run into?

Jim: Faculty vary in their willingness to embrace change, especially when it comes to reconsidering content coverage through backward design.

Liddy: But we’ve built in a Continuous Quality Improvement process to surface and resolve issues. Course evaluations, designed by our Curriculum Committee, target outcomes, delivery, and assessment.



Laura: It’s still early days, but what do you hope students will gain?

Liddy: We expect students to experience stronger integration of professional competencies and clearer alignment of learning across phases.

Jim: And faculty and curricular structures are now much better aligned with outcomes-based education. That’s a big step forward.

Key Takeaways: Change Management



Change management is a key factor to consider when implementing CBVE. In brief, curriculum change can be broken down into three phases: planning, implementation, and sustaining. Highlights of approach to curriculum change are provided below:


Planning:

  • Gather evidence to demonstrate the need for change
  • Ensure resources (personnel, space, faculty development, teaching support) are available to assist with the process
  • Create a team to guide the curriculum change process
  • Gather perspectives from stakeholders

Implementing

  • Ensure communication across stakeholders
  • Create an evaluation plan to document outcomes of curriculum change
  • Ensure the curriculum implementation team can be nimble and adapt to new challenges

Sustaining

  • Communicate what worked and what didn’t
  • Be prepared to make additional changes to allow for continual improvement
  • Celebrate wins!

 

Most importantly, remember that not all will embrace change! It is important to gather feedback, listen to perspectives, and continue to move forward.

 

Additional detail regarding approach to curriculum change management can be found in association with the Spectrum of Care implementation strategies guide here: https://www.aavmc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AAVMC-SOC-Guide_2025.pdf.
 

News


CBVE is trademarked! Below follows trademark useage guidelines. 

You can view the trademark registration here: USPTO Registration No. 97257671.


What You Need to Know

  • The acronym CBVE is a registered trademark of AAVMC and should be referenced as such when used in written materials, presentations, websites, and other public communications (e.g., “The spectrum of care competencies were integrated into the AAVMC Competency-Based Veterinary Education (CBVE®) Competency Framework as illustrative subcompetencies.”).
  • The CBVE acronym cannot be modified without permission from the AAVMC. For example, using the acronym “CBVSOCE” to reference the spectrum of care competencies embedded within the CBVE® Competency Framework would violate the conditions of the registered trademark.
  • AAVMC reserves the right to monitor use of the CBVE® trademarked acronym.
  • The first instance of CBVE in any written piece (e.g., article, presentation, website) should be written as “AAVMC Competency-Based Veterinary Education (CBVE®)” and include the registered trademark symbol. It is not necessary to include the ® symbol with every subsequent mention in the same document.


Summary of Key Points

  • Always credit the AAVMC CBVE® Model when using it.
  • Do not alter or break up the CBVE acronym.
  • Use CBVE® with the ® symbol on first reference in written or presented materials.


If you have questions about the appropriate use of CBVE®, email AAVMC.



Must Reads (Recent Publications)




Embracing Uncertainty in Competency-Based Veterinary Education: Assessing Domains of Communication, Collaboration, and Professionalism and Professional Identity – Ariana Hinckley-Boltax and Michelle Coleman - click here.


This paper highlights the inherent uncertainty in teaching and assessing veterinary students, with a focus on potential approaches to assessing some of the more difficult to assess domains in the CBVE Framework: Communication, Collaboration, and Professionalism and Professional Identity in both the pre-clinical and clinical environment. Using multiple assessments facilitates improved holistic evaluation of student progress, however, this must be balanced with resource availability.

Updates


CBVE Analyze

The Analyze Working Group is in the final stages of manuscript completion on a survey comparing student versus faculty perception of final year clinical feedback. A commentary on assessment of the CBVE domains of communication, collaboration, and professionalism has been accepted and is ready for publication. A manuscript on Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) requires finishing touches to go out to a journal for review. Our newest effort is in the creation of a survey of US and Canadian veterinary schools to document the current state of final clinical year structure. We will be asking each US and Canadian school to spend some time in completion of this survey in order to assess the state of the art of clinical year design, including numbers of rotations, location of those rotations (on or off campus), and assessment methods for those rotations.

 

CBVE Activate

Members of the Activate working group continue to make progress on Just-in-Time videos with the ITER video undergoing final edits. A series of curricular mapping videos are in the editing phase and videos on preclinical milestones and mapping assessments are in development. Activate subgroups are working on 6 Grab-and-Go Kits, with kits on feedback and EPA assessment nearing completion. These kits will provide all the materials needed for individuals to host training sessions for their faculty and staff. They will be available on the AAVMC’s learning management system LEARN.

 

CBVE Outreach

CBVE Outreach continues to create CBVE newsletter, which is issued several times each year. The next series of newsletters will highlight educator perspectives on implementatation of CBVE at their institutions. Please reach out to vetmed@cbve.org with your feedback or ideas for future newsletters—we value your input!

 

CBVE Collaborate

Collaborate continues to peer-support educators working to implement the CBVE model into their College’s educational program. Recent sessions have included those focused on post-graduate milestone development, artificial intelligence use, CBVE's impact on accreditation practices, and change driven by CBVE in teaching and learning. Some Collaborate members are moving into leadership roles at their institutions - Congratulations to Sarah Wood and Hilari French!
 



Upcoming Events




  • AAVMC Annual Conference and Iverson Bell Symposium, April 16–18, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Click here for more information.
  • Veterinary Education Symposium (VetEd) AAVMC, June 2-5, 2026 at UW Madison.
  • AMEE, August 22-26, 2026 st Vienna, Austria. Click here for more information.
  • VetEd DownUnder, February 2027, Melbourne, Australia.
 
 
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