Advancing faculty careers through the UAB Academy of Health Professions Educators

Caroline Harada, M.D., professor in the Department of Medical Education, received an HSF-GEF grant to start the Academy, which was created to "address the need for mentorship and recognition for our junior faculty clinician educators," she said. Junior faculty with promise are selected to be mentees in the Academy, where they are paired with a mentor for two years.Health care education depends on experienced clinicians. But one lesson most of these veterans did not learn themselves was the fundamentals of how to teach.

Faculty do not receive formal training in teaching, points out Caroline Harada, M.D., professor in the Department of Medical Education, and there are few formal opportunities for mentorship. “Each department may only have one senior educator — there is only one residency program, and one person in charge of that,” Harada said. “If that person already has a mentee, other junior clinician educators in the department may have trouble finding mentorship.”

Moreover, unlike faculty who specialize in research or in classroom education, clinician educators do not have clear career paths. “There is no blueprint for doing this,” Harada said. “When you are a researcher, if you are a Ph.D., you do a postdoc, you apply for grants, you get a K award and then an R01.” But for clinician educators, “there is no one path and no training program to walk you through the options,” Harada said. “You figure it out on your own — based on your talents, the advice you get from mentors and being in the right place at the time.”

Several years ago, Harada was talking with Lisa Willet, M.D., Dr. Tinsley R. Harrison Endowed Chair in Medical Resident Education in the Division of General Internal Medicine, and Craig Hoesley, M.D., senior associate dean for Medical Education, “about starting a teaching academy to address the need for mentorship and recognition for our junior faculty clinician educators,” she recalled. This was not a problem unique to UAB; starting with programs at Harvard University and the University of California San Francisco in the early 2000s, dozens of schools have started teaching academies to address the issue.

In 2018, Harada received a grant from the Health Services Foundation’s General Endowment Fund to launch the UAB Academy of Health Professions Educators. (Today she also holds the title of associate dean for Strategic Initiatives, Medical Education, at the Heersink School of Medicine.) As do clinician educators themselves, clinician-educator academies take on many forms at different schools. “If you have seen one teaching academy, you have seen one,” Harada said. “Some are just an award you receive; others offer pilot funds but not guidance. They are all quite different.”

Harada and her colleagues took a deliberately expansive viewpoint to the UAB Academy of Health Professions Educators. It is not restricted to the Heersink School of Medicine; participants come from all six health professions schools at UAB, including Nursing, Public Health, Health Professions, Dentistry and Optometry. (Members are nominated by their department or school. The Academy’s steering committee, which includes Dawn Taylor Peterson, Ph.D., director of the Office of Interprofessional Simulation; Jason Morris, M.D., professor of medicine; and Lisa Willett, M.D., makes the final selections.) The Academy focuses on building teaching skills in participants, advancing innovation, and supporting research and scholarship in health education.

Junior faculty with promise are selected to be mentees in the Academy, where they are paired with a mentor for two years. During that time, the mentees are required to complete an education project. “We select the mentors based on mentee needs,” Harada said. “In the application, we ask them about the challenges they want to work on. One mentee may need someone with expertise in simulation or creating online video modules using a particular software.” In addition to their projects, mentors and mentees may discuss how to get their work published, how to get ready for promotion or other topics. “If the participant needs help getting promoted in their school, it makes the most sense to pair them with someone in their school,” Harada said. “But if they want to work on service learning, for example, that ideal mentor may be somewhere else. Sometimes we will have a nursing faculty member and a public health faculty member mentoring a dentist; we like to mix it up.”

In its first four years, the Academy has graduated 24 mentees and had 38 participating mentors. There are 18 new mentor/mentee pairs in its 2023 cohort, which began in September. The Academy participants have seen significant career growth since joining the Academy: 10 have been promoted, 20 have new educational leadership roles, and together they have received 24 teaching awards. Academy members have produced 59 health care education publications in the past four years.

Academy participants and their mentors. Academy participants have seen significant career growth since joining the Academy: 10 have been promoted, 20 have new educational leadership roles, and together they have received 24 teaching awards. Academy members have produced 59 health care education publications in the past four years.

One of those participants is David Resuehr, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology, who was part of the first Academy cohort. “He created a really innovative tool for teaching,” Harada said. “We use a lot of simulators for teaching procedures, such as a silicone model of a knee that you can use to practice inserting a needle and injecting steroids. Those simulators cost almost $4,000, and after a hundred students put their needles into it, they start to break down.” Resuehr 3D prints a mold that allows him to cast his own silicone simulators. “When it reaches the end of its usable life, they melt it down and cast a new one,” Harada said. Resuehr is one of several Academy members who has been promoted from assistant to associate professor. “We hope his career development has been accelerated by his involvement in the Academy,” Harada said.

Another mentee from the first cohort, who also moved into an associate professor role since her participation, is Audra Williams, M.D., a member of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “Her project was around improving the didactic curriculum for OB/GYN residents in the outpatient clinic,” Harada said. “In part because of this work, she became a leader in the department and was selected to be their residency program director in 2022. She demonstrated her ability to do quality enhancement in education and earned her colleagues’ respect at a fairly junior stage of her career.”

In addition to mentorship from more experienced colleagues, Academy participants take part in quarterly faculty development seminars and have peer mentoring and networking opportunities. “Being a part of the Academy was one of the most fulfilling professional experiences of my academic career,” a participant said. “I continue to value and benefit from these long-term [peer] connections.”

In September each year, the Academy hosts ENRICH week, a weeklong celebration of health professions education that is open to anyone. (ENRICH stands for Educational Research and Innovations in Clinical and Health Sciences). The week includes poster sessions, a keynote speaker and workshops.

As the Academy continues to grow and their HSF-GEF grant wraps up, Harada and colleagues are seeking long-term funding. They are also looking to the future, with plans for expanding the number of mentees and mentors, offering funding to allow members to attend education conferences to present their work, and creation of a certificate or master’s program.

“If we can find funding, we have a number of exciting directions we want to explore to improve education at UAB,” Harada said.