Before the first class: Engaging students early in curriculum design to support program reform

What was the educational challenge? Curriculum reform is often something done to students, not with them-particularly before implementation. This top-down model limits the responsiveness of reforms and risks overlooking student priorities and expectations that could otherwise improve curricula. What was the solution and how was it implemented? In the context of a transition to a 3-year PharmD curriculum underpinned by adaptive expertise, we developed a low-resource model to meaningfully engage students during early-stage curriculum design. Using orientation materials and facilitated focus groups, we captured student insights on draft curricular blocks before launch, yielding actionable improvements and a foundation for program evaluation. What lessons were learned and what are the next steps? Engaging students in curriculum design before implementation is both feasible and valuable. With minimal time, coordination, and materials, focused discussions provided actionable insights that improved clarity, organization, and alignment in the proposed curriculum. This approach is scalable, adaptable, and bridges a longstanding gap between design and lived experience-inviting students into upstream decision-making with minimal cost or infrastructure. Our future work will explore how this engagement model can be integrated at key milestones across the curriculum lifecycle and scaled to support continuous, collaborative curriculum renewal.