Professional Development Series 2023 Virtual Sessions

Sponsored by the Department of Biomedical Education and Open to All UMMC Faculty

Academic Leadership: The Fundamentals
Thursday, March 2 | 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. | Presented by Dr. Betty Herrington
Leadership centers on one’s capacity to influence those with whom they work. As such, an individual may lead from any role including those who supervise and those who do not. Leadership embodies more than professional advancement, and leadership skills can be developed. In this session, the participant will learn about the fundamentals of leadership and how to develop leadership skills.

Engaging in Educational Quality Improvement
Thursday, April 6 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. David Norris
Continuous quality improvement holds that there is always room for improvement. It helps to identify areas for improvement and strengths so that curriculum and practices may be improved or solidified. Engaging in education quality improvement stands to identify what is working well with the curriculum, program practices, and policies as well as the areas that warrant improvement. Multiple data sources and ongoing monitoring are needed to make informed decisions that get at the heart of improvement. Data sources include student performance data within courses/clerkships, standardized licensure exam scores, student feedback, and program outcomes. A cycle of implementation, review and reflection, and revision supports quality improvement.

Student Learning Outcomes and Course Effectiveness: Build Your Process
Thursday, May 4 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Carley Dear
Effective teaching produces students who demonstrate mastery of knowledge and skills. Such mastery is determined by assessment of student learning outcomes. For the student, these assessments reveal mastery and may be viewed in terms of a grade. Yet, assessments provide a great deal of information to the instructor allowing for an evaluation of course effectiveness. Designing a course with assessments in mind can provide date that informs continuous quality improvement of the course, its teaching methods, content, and assessment items and methods.

Fundamentals of Statistics and Data Science in Medicine
Thursday, June 1 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Thomas Dobbs
A basic understanding of key concepts in statistics and data science informs clinical practice as well as the implementation and understanding of research in medicine. Participants in this session will obtain a basic understanding of these key concepts as they are taught contextually in clinical scenarios.

Integrated Curriculum: Tenets and Models
Thursday, June 8 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. David Norris
Curriculum integration is a broad construct that may include various conceptualizations. In this session, the participant is introduced to multiple definitions and types of curriculum integration. Vertical integration, horizontal integration, and spiral integration are examined along with a framework of integration, and integration ladder, to illustrate how to increase the level of integration and identify any promising entry points for increasing integration in current course/clerkship teaching. This session also includes a review of various curriculum integration efforts and their successes and challenges. Insights gained by the participants are intended to inform local practice as the School of Medicine launches its own curriculum integration efforts in the preclinical phase of the program.

Curriculum Development: From EPOs to Session Objectives
Thursday, June 15 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Maryam Syed
Educational program objectives (EPOs) specify the learning objectives for the medical education program leading to a Doctorate in Medicine. While the EPOs are broad, they provide guidance for course and clerkship objectives which in turn informs the learning objectives at the session level. New EPOs have been adopted by the Curriculum Committee for implementation beginning with the 2023-24 academic year. These EPOs provide a framework for what should be taught. This session allows the participant to explore the EPOs and their alignment with course/clerkship objectives and session objectives.

Education Scholarship: One Year in the Medical Education Grant Academy
Thursday, June 22 | 11:00 – 12:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Savannah Duckworth
Academic medical centers, like the University of Mississippi Medical Center, often have interlocked missions of education, research, and health care. Even with these concurrent missions, scholarship in education can be pushed aside due to perceptions of a lack of grant support and the demands of clinical practice. This presentation chronicles a clinician's one-year training in a medical education research grant academy highlighting the support received in the development of a concept paper and grant proposal as well as the resources for funding education-based research.

Professional Identity Formation
Thursday, June 29 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Molly Clark
Becoming a physician is a process that begins in medical school. This session includes ways to incorporate educational opportunities for medical students to develop professionally and to educate medical students about the expectations for physicians. While modeling professional behavior is a critical part of medical students' professional identity formation, explicit instruction, and effective feedback contribute to their professional identity formation. Effective feedback includes verbal communication, but professionalism must also be evaluated with students understanding the basic areas for which they are evaluated. As such professionalism is viewed as a construct that can be taught and measured along specified attributes.

Change Management
Thursday, July 6 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Loretta Jackson-Williams
Change is inevitable and sometimes it is drastic. Managing change requires adaptability, resilience, and leadership. New strategies must be employed to meet the needs of stakeholders in light of new circumstances. Equipping and supporting those who must implement the work under new circumstances allows for creativity and requires effective communication. Building on the diverse skills of team members to manage change can yield outcomes that surpass expectations.

Diversity and Inclusion
Thursday, July 13 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Juanyce Taylor, Office of Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity in the absence of a feeling of belonging undermines efforts aimed at building on the richness that a diverse community brings. In this session, not only are microaggressions defined and examined along with the harm they cause but strategies for how to address microaggressions are provided as well as ways to identify and manage one's own implicit biases.

Diverse Presentation Modalities to Enhance Student Learning
Thursday, July 20 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Edgar Meyer, et al.
The classroom setting is filled with students from different backgrounds with different learning needs and preferences. Employing multiple approaches increases instructors' opportunities to appeal to those differences. This panel of presenters share their tried-and-true diverse presentation modalities in the classroom or learning environment for optimized student learning. The presenters also share contexts for specific approaches and other factors to facilitate successful implementation and enhanced student understanding.

Receiving Feedback as a Faculty Member: Improving Practice as an Educator and Clinician
Thursday, July 27 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Dr. Brad Ingram
Faculty members often spend a great deal of time thinking about how to give effective feedback. However, throughout a faculty 
member’s career he/she receives feedback frequently and from many sources. Faculty receive feedback from medical students, residents, fellows, colleagues, department chairs, grant review panels, and journal reviewers. This session examines strategies for 
managing feedback as a faculty member in order to improve practice as a teacher or supervisor, clinician, and scholar.

Promotion for the Educator
Thursday, October 5 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm| Presented by Dr. Norma Ojeda
Faculty in the School of Medicine (SOM) are expected to demonstrate excellence and their commitment to the mission areas in the SOM and at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The mission areas, education, health care, and research, guide the work of all faculty and staff. At times, the health care mission or research mission may appear to overshadow that of education. This session outlines expectations and strategies for faculty seeking to obtain tenure or promotion based on their work as an educator. Two intertwined, approaches include garnering scholarship on teaching as a basic scientist or clinician and developing a research program that includes grant writing and obtaining external funding.

Teaching about Patient Safety
Thursday, November 2 | 12:00 – 1:00 pm | Presented by Emily Tarver
Patient safety must be an intentional goal for clinicians and learners. Teaching about patient safety, when integrated in clinical-based learning opportunities, gets at both the importance of patient safety as well as ways to prevent errors. Additionally, incorporating patient safety early in the medical education curriculum helps to support a culture that is built on patient safety. Participants in this session examine strategies to improve patient safety and ways to incorporate them into learning opportunities.

Learning Theories: How Medical Students Learn
TBA
In this session, the presenter provides an overview of multiple learning theories and highlights the benefits and limitations of each. Implications for designing instruction are explored.