Community of Scholars

Good morning.

Today, I want to shine a light on our academic mission area and the esteemed group that leads the way on our responsibility to be the state’s primary producer of health professionals – our faculty. 

University. It’s the first word in our name and refers to the heart and soul of all we do – teaching and producing scholarly work. Among all the hustle and bustle at our Medical Center, we are an academic institution at our core that relies upon instruction by our faculty. And to say our faculty are second-to-none would be an understatement. Our students and trainees are lucky to be able to learn their chosen craft through our faculty who are committed to teaching our future workforce. 

We’ve recruited a quality faculty, and we do all we can to create a supportive environment in which they want to stay. Faculty retention is a challenge for every institution of higher learning and can be especially challenging for health care-related ones. How can we ensure that our best faculty choose to stay? 

Research suggests that ways that an institution can solidify its faculty ranks is through “promoting collegiality, fostering positive workplace cultures and demonstrating commitment to professional growth.” In essence, if we want our faculty to come and stay, we need to promote a healthy, vibrant academic community. 

The Office of Academic Affairs and its Office of Faculty Affairs take this challenge very seriously and operate several programs aimed at improving faculty satisfaction and that offer development opportunities to faculty in every school. And these efforts will get even more intense with the next five-year strategic plan starting in July, UMMC 2030. One of the five core strategies will be focused on building and enhancing our teaching and scholarship environment, fostering faculty in all six schools to think of themselves as members of a “One UMMC” academic community. 

A successful initiative that is helping to bring all our faculty closer and give them opportunities for growth is Faculty Focus. These are academic-focused sessions led by faculty from all UMMC schools and others from outside UMMC that include “programming designed to cultivate and enhance instructional, research & scholarship, and leadership expertise.” And faculty can earn CE credit for attending.  

Faculty Focus topics include teaching/instruction skills, leadership skills and research/scholarship. These categories were developed based on faculty responses to the 2021 StandPoint climate survey. Faculty spoke and we listened. We started participating in the AAMC’s StandPoint Faculty Survey, formally called Faculty Forward, in 2009. We are a leader in this space. UMMC is the only institution nationally that has asked their faculty to complete this survey for that long and our faculty participation rates are among the highest. 

Since the program was established in October 2023, there have been 34 Faculty Focus development presentations attended by 1,358 faculty and others. A faculty committee meets to pick session topics or identify ones that have broad faculty interest that should be developed into a talk. Faculty Focus sessions are listed on the intranet calendar and included in the Upcoming Events item in the weekly Medical Center Matters newsletter. I’m confident that you can find a session in which you are interested or believe can advance your professional growth, which will ultimately benefit your students/trainees and broader audiences through your academic writings and/or research. 

Faculty Focus and similar faculty engagement and development programs offer faculty opportunities to engage with and help each other become better scholars and teachers. And the Academy for Excellence in Education highlights those faculty who have risen to the highest levels of academics. Among the Medical Center’s community of scholars, these faculty are the pinnacle of what it means to be a dedicated, effective, innovative, compassionate educator. 

We know that the strength of our academic, clinical and research mission areas depends heavily on our faculty, and we must invest in them to maintain the high level of excellence that defines UMMC. With a devoted, fully engaged and highly skilled faculty at our core, we can stay laser-focused on our top priority – creating A Healthier Mississippi.