Continuing medical education has been a priority at the U-M ever since the Department of Postgraduate Medicine was established in 1927. Michigan has organized myriad conferences and symposia centered on advancements in medical treatment and significant issues in medical education. These programs have provided valuable professional updates for physicians and faculty. But what about those pursuing or interested in career paths within the field of medical education?

In 1997, Interim Medical School Dean A. Lorris Betz, M.D., and Associate Dean for Medical Education Wayne K. Davis, Ph.D., answered this question by deciding to fund a formal program that would focus on the enrichment and promotion of Medical School faculty devoted to medical education. The result was the Medical Education Scholars Program, now in its fifth year.

Larry Gruppen Photo: Martin Vloet

“It wasn’t that there was a lack of leadership in medical education at the time,” explains Larry Gruppen (Ph.D. 1987), who has directed the program since its inception, “but rather a concern about the ‘pipeline’ for the future — where the next set of directors and leaders was going to come from.”

The tenets of the program revolve around leadership, says Gruppen, a professor in the Department of Medical Education, director of the Department’s Office of Educational Resources and Research, and the Depart-ment’s new chair. “In our definition of leadership we include scholarship as a key component, emphasizing that education itself becomes an area of scholarship — something that you think about in the same critical, scientific ways that you think about your clinical or research activities.”

The MESP is a competitive program that accepts six to eight faculty applicants per year. Originally designed for Medical School faculty, the program is relevant and applicable to faculty in all the health professions, including medicine, public health, nursing, dentistry and pharmacy, enabling them to pursue scholarship in health professions education, to take on greater educational leadership, and to become more effective teachers.

Scholars devote a half-day each week to the year-long program. The MESP financially covers this release time, allowing scholars to dedicate time to the program — a novel feature compared to similar programs and one that relieves participants of the complications of compensating for time away from the clinic, classroom or lab.
In addition to lectures by leading medical educators from across the country, MESP scholars conduct their own educational research and development projects, which they conceptualize themselves. Gruppen describes the projects as “pragmatic” endeavors based on topics or problems the scholars are dealing with in their current responsibilities. Some are forms of curriculum development, while others are research projects concentrating on specific areas of medical education. “It’s a kind of lab for each of them to practice what we’re preaching,” explains Gruppen.

A key and often lively component of the MESP is the Scholar’s Hour, a group discussion devised and led by an individual scholar. Each participant conducts several Scholar’s Hours through the year. Many scholars use this as an opportunity to present and get feedback on parts of their project, but others use it as a creative session to cultivate discussion about medical education issues. Some even use it to get comments on their current educational prowess. “For one of my Scholar’s Hours I played a videotape of one of my own lectures and let everyone critique it, which was just as humiliating as it could be,” laughs Robert Lash, M.D., clinical associate professor of internal medicine and a member of the MESP’s first cohort.

The MESP staff accepts educators from different specialties, different departments and at different points in their careers. Diversity, especially the combination of senior and junior faculty involved, plays a major role in shaping the MESP’s eclectic topics.

“Having established faculty members provides a sense of perspective, particularly for new faculty,” says Gruppen. “The wisdom they’ve accumulated, and their hard-won experience, have really been beneficial to pragmatic problem-solving. And the junior faculty members contribute enormously with their enthusiasm. They bring a different perspective to the more established faculty — they’re not tied to history or bound to standard ways of doing things. The mix works well.”

And so does the MESP itself, we now know. In a paper published in the February 2003 issue of Academic Medicine, Gruppen and colleagues reported on pre- and post-program outcomes that speak to a significant impact on faculty members, their careers, and the Medical School. Looking at 35 graduates of the program, Gruppen’s team noted a 67 percent increase in the number of promotions (reflective not only of the program, he qualifies, but also the early career stage of some of the scholars); a 167 percent increase in new educational responsibilities among participants, often at regional and national levels; and large increases in professional recognition such as educational awards, publications, presentations and posters, and educational grants.

Gruppen and his staff are already expanding the program’s boundaries. Resources from other schools such as Public Health, the School of Business Administration, and the Department of Psychology in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, are being incorporated, and Gruppen is working to formalize ties with the School of Education, which is not only providing the MESP with additional educational resources, but also a potential master’s program that would allow MESP graduates to attain a formal education degree after additional coursework.

Scholars point to the connections developed among participants during the MESP, and the collaboration that continues afterwards, as one of the most important benefits of the program. “I think the most helpful thing for me was gaining contact and networking with people who are doing educational research all the time,” says John Frohna, M.D., a member of the first MESP cohort and clinical assistant professor of internal
medicine and of pediatrics and communicable diseases.

Robert Lash agrees. “MESP has allowed the formation of a community of people interested in medical education here that otherwise wouldn’t have come together,” he says. “When I’m looking for people to be involved in teaching activities at the Medical School, one of my first go-to lists is MESP alums. The caliber of people is tremendous.”

—RS

Also:

Focusing on Leadership

Medical Education Day 2003

A Long and Illustrious History of Leading the Way

Changing of the Guard