Educational Spaces | M.D. Program | Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Belfer Classrooms

The Belfer Education Center for Health Sciences is where Einstein has its primary classrooms. The classrooms are used almost exclusively for small groups / conferences and spread over multiple floors. Several are single rooms for up to 20 students while nine rooms support up to 30 students, but can split into two for smaller, more engaging conversations. The individual rooms each have high-resolution 55-inch monitors and the larger rooms have two, which connect directly to built-in computers, allowing facilitators to share information from the internet in real-time as well upload presentations that they have prepared in advance. In addition, each room has video conferencing capabilities.

Clinical Skills Center

The Ruth L. Gottesman Clinical Skills Center, located in Van Etten, meets the educational needs of Einstein’s medical school students as a resource for the teaching as well as the assessment of clinical skills. Throughout their education, physicians-in-training need a safe and supportive environment to learn, practice, and receive feedback on the clinical skills that are essential to the practice of medicine.

Simulated and Standardized Patients

As part of Einstein’s mission to educate and assess the skills of medical students, Einstein has its own standardized patient program that employs professionally trained actors for both formative teaching sessions (simulated encounters) as well as clinical skills assessments (standardized patient encounters). These highly trained professionals work with all Einstein faculty across the curriculum in programs (teaching or research) that include patient simulation, such as the pre-clerkship Introduction to Clinical Medicine course, the Medical Spanish course and clinical clerkships.

During their Medicine clerkship rotation, students participate in an innovative educational experience called a Group Observed Structured Clinical Exam (GOSCE), where students work together to address patients’ medical problems. Other clerkships, Family Medicine and Pediatrics, use individual OSCE’s with simulated patients that enable students to gain experience in situations specific to each of these disciplines.

The largest OSCE at the Clinical Skills Center is the Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) exam, which all Einstein students must take at the beginning of their 4th year. This exam is similar in design to the former USMLE Step 2 CS exam, and covers content areas in all the major clerkships. In addition to a diagnostic challenge, each case also includes a psychosocial component, which poses an interpersonal or communication challenge.

Clinical Skills Assessment

The largest OSCE at the Clinical Skills Center is the clinical skills assessment (CSA) exam, which all Einstein students must take at the end of their third year. This exam is similar in design to the former USMLE Step 2 CS exam, and covers content areas in all the major clerkships. In addition to a diagnostic challenge, each case also includes a psychosocial component, which poses an interpersonal or communication challenge.

Education Center

The Forchheimer Medical Science Education Center is comprised of 13,000 square feet of space, previously the College’s library stacks, that houses large group and small group active learning studios, enabling students and faculty to interact in dynamic learning environments.

Large-Group Active Learning Studio This space, comparable in length to a football field, can accommodate an entire medical school class (~180+ students) and faculty participating in interactive, large-group exercises. The room’s audiovisual technology coordinates large, high-resolution monitors and an integrated speaker system as well as glass boards along the circumference.

Small-Group Active Learning Studios These more intimate spaces, formerly the upper stacks of the library, feature a different modality of interactive learning. They're designed to foster collaborative, project-based activities. Furniture in these smaller rooms is movable, in the interest of offering students a dynamic learning experience. Team-based learning is emphasized in both the large-group and small-group active learning studios. Graduate students also use the large-group and small-group active learning studios, since many courses in the new graduate curriculum emphasize team-based learning. Each space has large, high-resolution monitors and video conferencing capabilities.

Lubin Hall

The Lubin Hall is used for teaching in large group sessions, as well as for breaking into smaller groups. Accommodating an entire medical school class, it has newly installed technologies, LCD monitors, speaker system as well as a pc, and includes the capabilities for video conferencing.

Riklis Auditorium

The primary lecture hall for Einstein’s first-year students, this 190-seat tiered seating auditorium is also used for large institutional meetings. In addition to the standard technologies used throughout the campus, Riklis has the additional capacity to record (audio and high quality video) and store all lectures that take place in Riklis using MediaSite.

Robbins Auditorium

The primary lecture hall for Einstein’s second-year students, this 650-seat theater-style auditorium is also used for major ceremonies, e.g,, On Becoming a Physician, Stethoscope Ceremony, and the senior awards, to name a few. In addition to the standard technologies used throughout the campus, Robbins, like its counterpart Riklis, uses MediaSite to record (audio and high quality video) and store all lectures that take place there.

Montefiore Einstein Center for Innovation in Simulation (MECIS)

Students entering the Simulation Center, located in Van Etten, will be greeted by their professors and by computerized mannequins that can blink, sweat, breathe, and more—giving the students a way to work with almost-real patients. Studies show that practicing high-risk skills on high-fidelity mannequins translates into better performance when doing procedures such endoscopic surgery and in team-based emergency situations such as acute cardiac and respiratory resuscitation.