Meet John Sullivan MD, PhD
Medical Educator | Chair of Basic Sciences and Research, Touro University
Co-Founder, Basecamp
Dr. Sullivan is a clinical educator and Chair of Basic Sciences and Research at Touro University, where he helps shape the education of future physician assistants through curriculum development, faculty mentorship, and innovative approaches to clinical education. Over the course of his career, he has taught thousands of students in physiology, pathophysiology, and the foundational sciences that underpin clinical reasoning.
His passion extends beyond teaching medicine, it is understanding how people learn medicine.
As artificial intelligence has transformed access to information, Dr. Sullivan recognized an important challenge: having answers is not the same as developing understanding. Everyone uses computer-aided AI daily, but he believes it can become one of the most powerful tools ever created for learning, when it is designed to promote reasoning instead of replacing it.
That philosophy became the foundation for Basecamp.
Basecamp was built around a simple idea: every student learns differently. Instead of delivering the same explanations to everyone, the platform helps learners identify where their understanding is strongest, where misconceptions remain, and which cognitive skills need the most development. By combining educational science with thoughtfully designed AI, Basecamp helps students become more effective, independent learners.
Dr. Sullivan has worked extensively with developers, educational researchers, and clinical educators to create learning experiences that prioritize understanding over memorization, curiosity over passive consumption, and lasting knowledge over short-term performance. His work focuses on helping students build the habits of thinking that will serve them throughout PA school, clinical training, and lifelong medical practice.
His educational philosophy is simple:
The goal of this platform isn't to think for you. It's to help you become a better thinker.
"I've spent my career studying medicine, but even more importantly, studying how students learn medicine. Basecamp is the culmination of that journey, a tool designed not to give you answers, but to help you understand why those answers matter and how to build the clinical reasoning skills that will carry you through school and into practice."
Meet Christin Paglen JD
Academic Faculty, Co-Director PA Masters Completion program
Founding Faculty: Basecamp
Christin Paglen is a healthcare lawyer and educator who guides graduate PAs through the process of research and scholarly writing. She has been the Co-Director of the PA Masters Completion program and a founding faculty member of the doctoral program for physican associates. Professor Paglen has had the pleasure of creating courses that help clinical professionals thrive-- not just in PA school but during their decades-long careers.
As artificial intelligence has consumed university classrooms, Professor Paglen became passionate about developing products that would help students transform from a focus on test prep and answer based educational outcomes to passionately curious clinicians—focused on genuine understanding. During law school Professor Paglen had two experiences that helped shape the development of Basecamp. The first experience was educational exposure to the Socratic method where hard questions and follow up discussions promoted lasting life-long paradigm shifts. The second was a similar Basecamp experience prior to starting law school that helped Professor Paglen graduate at the top of her law school class. Without this preparation, she feels strongly she wouldn’t have made it through the first academic semester.
The approach taken with the development of this program is based on preventative medicine which operates on a simple principle: intervene before dysfunction becomes disease. Basecamp represents a preventative educational model and uses the student’s pre-matriculation period to offer a valuable opportunity for an orientation to clinical process. This product is not focused on answer-delivery—it is a partner in meaningful learning promoting supportive cognitive growth.
Meet Daniel Forsberg, DPA, PA-C, MPH
Medical Educator | Founding Director Institute of Excellence, Touro University
Co-Founder, Sure-PA, LLC
Dr. Forsberg is a 1986 graduate of Touro College where he has taught since 1991. After completing the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/ Montefiore Medical Center, Post Graduate Surgical Residency program, Dr. Forsberg has practiced in Emergency Medicine, General, Vascular and Thoracic surgery and eventually in Plastic & Reconstructive, Burn and Microsurgery and now Urgent Care. In 2002, Dr. Forsberg developed and staffed a PA model for inpatient house-staff for the departments of surgery at Forest Hills Hospital where he was Administrative Director of Surgery and Interim Director of Clinical Operations. He has established inter-disciplinary healthcare programs, for both hospitalized and ambulatory patients.
An ardent proponent of medical education, Dr. Forsberg holds appointments as Assistant Professor at NYIT, and NYCOM and Touro University where is the founding Program Director for the Touro University Illinois, PA Program and the Founding Director of the Institute of Excellence. He has been a preceptor to students from no less than eighteen PA programs and three medical schools. Dr. Forsberg holds an MPH from Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Graduate Program in Public Health and a DPA from Touro University Nevada, where his research described the role of cognition in clinical education. In addition to clinical medicine, Dr. Forsberg taught Bioethics and Health Law at Hofstra University for eight years. He is an active member of many professional organizations to include AAPA, NYSSPA, Society of Vascular Surgery and the American Public Health Association where he is a CE- Credit Evaluator for both the ethics and health law sections. As well as an item writer for the CPH exam. He remains clinically active in Urgent Care where he is a peer-reviewer for the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine.