Highlight of 2020 Initiatives for the Center for Faculty Educators

Patricia O’Sullivan, EdD; Ann Poncelet, MD; Raquel Rodriquez, and Sandrijn van Schaik, MD, PhD are excited to share with you highlights of 2020 initiatives for the Center for Faculty Educators.

Focus on New Faculty
In 2019, the CFE began to consider strategies for promoting the visibility of our resources, specifically to new educators. Our staff team conducted interviews with new faculty in various departments to learn from them what they wish they knew when they started their work as educators at UCSF. This year, we plan to continue our work with department leaders, such as Vice-Chairs for Education, as well as those engaged in outreach to junior educators, like Academy members and faculty developers, to begin implementing approaches to information sharing about educator resources that currently exist. We welcome all feedback and look forward to sharing more!

Academy of Medical Educators 20th Anniversary
The Academy is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2020. We are one of the most established and successful educator academies, starting with an inaugural class of 24 educators in 2001 (I was one of them) to 163 members from across four schools, seven sites and 27 departments in 2020.  We are planning for a big celebration at our summer meeting that will include a panel of key leaders to reflect on the establishment and journey of the Academy.  A presentation after the panel is from the AME 2025 task force chaired by Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MD and Kanade Shinkai, MD, PhD charged with exploring and proposing approaches for how the Academy should evolve in the next five years to meet the needs of educators at UCSF. We are also hoping to bring an especially inspiring keynote speaker for the New Members Celebration in the fall.  

LACE
The LACE “Learning and Caring Environment” program is a grant-funded initiative sponsored by the Kern National Network for Caring and Character in Medicine, which aims to prepare and empower faculty in the clinical settings to provide an optimal learning environment for learners. After an initial data collection phase, the LACE team is now rolling out workplace-based faculty development activities. In collaboration with CFE and Academy leadership, LACE will start employing teams in individual departments and divisions and bring workshops, consultations and other skill development opportunities to the workplace. This effort targets all faculty who work with learners, and the main focus for 2020 is improving feedback about learners’ clinical performance to support assessment for learning. As part of this initiative, the LACE team created an on-line repository with modules, videos, tip sheets and other resources to benefit all faculty who teach learners in any setting.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
DEI remains a major focus for the CFE. This program includes the full day DEI champion training.  Over 80% of CFE participants such as members of the Academy of Medical Educators, faculty developers, and participants in the Teaching Scholars Program, have participated in this training. The Innovations Funding program supports curricular innovation in DEI education, with DEI as a priority area. This year the CFE launched the Teach for UCSF Equity and Inclusion certificate under the stewardship of Kate Lupton, MD who received Innovations Funding.  The forthcoming Education Showcase keynote speaker, Stella Ng, PhD, will focus on compassionate healthcare systems and complexity and will include a series of roundtable discussions.  Since issues related to DEI are central to this topic, we will host showcase roundtables to discuss personal identity and background and how we bring these to our clinical environments.  We will invite faculty pairs to record their conversations, modeled on 'story corps' to: create a lasting record of conversations like this around critical topics, provide opportunities for all of us to learn more about one another; and, deepen our understanding of our diverse community of educators.  A new CFE DEI web page with information about our DEI work and resources launching in 2020.

The New Home for Educators
2020 marks a new home for the CFE! We are excited to return to the Clinical Sciences Building (CSB) this year! After receiving final logistics and notice to move, we will provide updates and our new address.