As most of you know, the medical school has been hard at work developing our new Three Rivers Curriculum, set to roll out in August 2023. One of the innovations will be a major change in how we identify, train, support, and monitor our core faculty educators who teach in the MD curriculum, starting with the Foundations phase, where students begin learning both basic and clinical science content essential for their journey to become physicians. We would like now to formally invite you to apply for roles as faculty educators in that curriculum.
This has been a long and difficult process, many people have worked very hard on it, and the details still haven’t all been worked out. But here’s the basic plan:
- Faculty (both clinicians and basic scientists) can apply for one or more teaching roles at the medical school
- These roles will receive support a certain percentage of effort to allow faculty time to teach
- Individuals will need the support of their division/department to do those roles
- We seek to recruit a diverse group of faculty for these roles—experiences/seniority, departments, demographics, degrees, etc.—to provide the best education possible for our students
- New faculty educators will receive robust faculty development, both onboarding and ongoing
- Educators will be signing up for a multiyear commitment to the school, and individuals who don’t fulfill our high standards for quality will be asked to step down
- Roles can be “stacked”—i.e., one individual could do multiple roles
- Roles can be shared—i.e., two individuals “job-share” a particular role
We want to emphasize that this system is structured to support collaboration across disciplines, integration of content, flattening hierarchy, and fostering collegiality. We WANT foundational science educators to work with physicians to develop and deliver curriculum effectively. The more we work together, the stronger we will be as a school and as a community.
We will provide more detail here on the process and the specific roles:
For more information on Longitudinal Educator and Clinical Skills Preceptor roles and to apply, click HERE.
For more information on Faculty Leadership roles and to nominate, click HERE.
What if I don’t want (or don’t get) a formal role—can I still teach?
Absolutely! Most faculty will NOT get these positions, but there are plenty of other ways to contribute to the educational mission. Faculty will still be able to do a lot of teaching in the clerkships and bridges phase (e.g., clinical precepting), in lab settings (e.g., helping out with cadaveric dissection), in streams/AOC’s, in PECs (professional enrichment courses), for specialized content (e.g., gynecologic exams), and so forth. We will need faculty to help curate and create resources for teaching content, from identifying high-quality external resources to recording short videos on specific content. We will be using the Visual Human Atlas (VHA) and faculty who aren’t LE’s could help identify pertinent material, even assisting with teaching. Faculty will also provide content expertise for students in office hours or doing remediation. Students will still need mentorship and advising. Faculty can also “train” to become an LE by sitting in on small groups or clinical skills work, under the supervision of our paid educators—an apprenticeship model that will help people prepare for future applications.
What if I want more information?
We know there will still be many questions about our plans, and we welcome further discussion. We will hold Town Halls to meet with interested faculty about these roles—times to be announced. If you have specific questions, please reach out at any point:
- Questions about Roles, Selection Process, Training, etc.: Jason Rosenstock, MD
- Questions about Logistics/Administration—e.g., website, surveys, timelines: Brittany Goldsmith
Lastly, we recognize that what we have is not perfect and may need to be changed over time—this will be an iterative process. However, we are hopeful and confident that this system will help us develop and maintain a high quality teaching system that works for both students and faculty.
So please apply now—we’d love to have you as part of our teaching team!