Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine has received a 2025 Health Professions Higher Education Excellence and Distinction (HEED) Award from Insight Into Academia Magazine, an influential magazine that covers issues and trends in American higher education.
Given annually, the prestigious Health Professions HEED Award recognizes U.S. health colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to academic excellence, belonging, and community-building across all levels of campus life. Geisel will be featured, along with 28 other recipients, in the October 2025 issue of Insight Into Academia magazine.
One of only eight medical schools, and the only Ivy League institution to receive this honor, this is the third consecutive year Geisel has been named a Health Professions HEED Award recipient.
“It is an honor for Geisel to be recognized for our robust efforts to enhance community impact and belonging across our school and beyond,” says Steven Leach, MD, interim dean of Geisel. “I want to commend Dr. Lisa McBride, her DICE team and all our faculty, students, and staff for their ongoing commitment to building a welcoming campus community that fully embraces our many cultures.”
Insight Into Academia also recognized Geisel School of Medicine with the HEED Champion award for exemplifying an unyielding commitment to higher education excellence and belonging throughout its campus community, academic programs, and the highest administrative levels. A limited number of colleges and universities across the nation have been selected for this honor.
This honor ranks the medical school in the top tier of HEED Award recipients as an organization for its demonstrated and outstanding commitment to and ongoing promotion of community partnerships and the fostering of an environment where everyone feels a true sense of belonging.
“We take a detailed and somewhat holistic approach to reviewing each application in determining who will be named a Health Professions HEED Award recipient,” said Lenore Pearlstein, co-publisher of Insight into Academia magazine. “Our standards are high, and we look for institutions where academic excellence and belonging are woven into the work being done every day across their campus.”
This year’s award recognizes the programs, initiatives, and opportunities pursued by recipients to nurture a sense of belonging by students, faculty, and staff. Other criteria considered in this award selection: off-campus community partnerships and recognition bestowed by a college on employees whose service and scholarship are considered “invisible labor” away from core work responsibilities.
Over the past year, Geisel’s DICE Office collaborated with Evonne Kaplan-Liss, MD, MPH, who leads compassionate communication at UC San Diego's Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion, to offer Lead with Compassion workshops for Geisel students, faculty and staff, the development and teaching of communication curricula for medical professionals and students, and utilizing arts and humanities-based methods. Through an interactive curriculum based in arts and humanities, these immersive sessions equip participants with tools to enhance their leadership performance, using proven empathy and compassion principles. “Our overarching goal is to rewire the way our community thinks about communication in medical education, and address the importance of awareness and self-compassion,” said Dr. Lisa McBride, associate dean for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (ADDEIB) at Geisel.
The 2025 HEED award also recognizes Geisel’s partnerships within the greater Upper Valley through its Community Service Learning (CSL) Program. Service learning is a structured learning experience that combines community service with mentored preparation and reflection. Students provide service in response to community-identified concerns and learn about the context in which illness develops, the connection between their service and their academic coursework, and their roles as citizens and professionals. Students use what they learn both inside and outside the classroom to empower medically underserved communities.
“Geisel is an extraordinary community of faculty, staff, and students because of the wide range of backgrounds, lived experiences, and perspectives that we bring to our work and studies every day. A strong sense of belonging is inextricably linked to wellbeing, which creates the conditions for community members to do their best work,” McBride says.
“This year’s HEED award is a testament to how hard Geisel has worked to cultivate this kind of environment, in support of its people and their pursuit of teaching, learning, research, and scholarship of the highest caliber. Together, we create a space that is inclusive and welcoming for all and where everyone can thrive. Geisel is and will remain a place where all people are welcomed with dignity and respect. As we move forward, we must remain focused on the big rocks that we have already started to move.”
About the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
Founded in 1797, the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth strives to improve the lives of the communities it serves through excellence in learning, discovery, and healing. The Geisel School of Medicine is renowned for its leadership in medical education, healthcare policy and delivery science, biomedical research, global health, and in creating innovations that improve lives worldwide. As one of America’s leading medical schools, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine is committed to training new generations of diverse leaders who will help solve our most vexing challenges in healthcare.
About Insight Into Academia
Insight Into Academia magazine is the leader in recognizing inclusive excellence in higher education through its many prestigious awards, and in advancing best practices in inclusive excellence and belonging through their website and print magazine.
Through thought-provoking print and online articles, Insight shares expert advice, valuable resources, in-depth profiles of top programs at colleges and universities, headline news, and much more to help keep readers informed and empower them to advance initiatives at their institutions.
At Insight’s online Career Center, readers will also discover career opportunities that connect job seekers with hundreds of institutions.
Current, archived, and digital issues of Insight Into Academia magazine are available online at insightintoacademia.com.
