News & Commentary

6.22.11

Five Nurse and Physician Academic Leaders Join First Class of Macy Faculty Scholars

Foundation’s New Program Offers Mentorship, $1 Million in Support to Lead Innovations in Health Professions Education

New York, NY—The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation today named five medicine and nursing faculty members from health professions schools across the country to its first class of Macy Faculty Scholars. Each Scholar has put forth a bold proposal for educational reform at their home institution and will receive support and mentorship from the Foundation to pursue that project.
The Macy Faculty Scholars Program seeks to develop the next generation of national leaders in medical and nursing education by recognizing and nurturing mid-career medical and nursing faculty who have shown great promise as committed educators. It is the only program in the United States to accelerate reforms in health professions education needed to accommodate the dramatic changes occurring in medical practice and health care delivery.

“We established the scholars program to develop leaders who can help transform health professions education to better meet the public’s needs,” said George Thibault, MD, president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation.  “These outstanding individuals hold great promise to move forward on changes like interprofessional education, diversifying the medical workforce, and improving care for the underserved.”

Scholars will receive salary support at $100,000 per year over two years, providing them with protected time to implement their proposals for educational reform. Projects range from examining and teaching the competencies needed to treat diverse and underserved groups to developing models for interprofessional education and practice, patient safety, and quality improvement. In addition, Scholars will be provided with career development opportunities through mentoring and access to a national support network.

This year’s scholars were chosen from 120 applications.

The 2011 Macy Faculty Scholars are:

Eve R. Colson, MD—Yale University
Colson is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine. In addition, she works as Pediatric Clerkship Director, Director of the Primary Clinical Curriculum and Director of Assessment of Educational Progress. She has received numerous awards for her teaching, most recently the Alvan R. Feinstein Award given to the Yale faculty member chosen as the outstanding teacher of clinical skills of the year.

Colson’s long-term goal is to drive teaching and learning in outpatient settings, where patient care largely occurs, increase interprofessional learning and collaboration, and improve the effectiveness of student learning assessments and curriculum evaluation. As a Macy Faculty Scholar, Colson will develop a year-long interprofessional longitudinal education curriculum that provides medical students, advance-practice nursing students and physician-assistant students with the opportunity to work side-by-side in treating patients in an out-patient setting.

Alan Dow, MD, MSHA—Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)
Alan Dow is Assistant Dean of Medical Education and Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the VCU School of Medicine.  He researches and teaches about patient safety and communication in health care. For his work with the VCU Department of Theatre on applying techniques of theatre to improve medical communication and influence outcomes, Dow received the School’s Educational Innovation/Educational Research Award.

Dow is interested in how patient care can be improved through increased collaboration of health professionals and how to teach the team-based competencies that foster effective interprofessional practice. He will create an interprofessional curriculum that can be exported to other institutions, providing them with a toolkit for instruction and assessment to ensure successful adoption.

Dena H. Hassouneh, PhD, ANP, PMHNP—Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU)
Hassouneh is Associate Professor at the OHSU School of Nursing and serves on OHSU’s Diversity Advisory Council. Over the past ten years, Hassouneh has worked to identify and address the effects of racism in health professions education. She is currently examining racism in nursing education.

Hassouneh’s ultimate goal is to increase diversity in the health professions workforce so that is more closely matches the populations served. She hopes to achieve this by advancing anti-racist pedagogies in health professions education and improving the academic environment for faculty and students of color. Her project as a Macy Faculty Scholar will be to develop and test an interprofessional diversity intervention targeting nursing and other health professions schools.

Jennifer Myers, MD—University of Pennsylvania
Myers is Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the recently named Director of Quality and Safety Education for Penn Medicine. In this role she oversees undergraduate and graduate medical education in the field of healthcare quality and patient safety. Other roles at Penn include Patient Safety Officer, Assistant Residency Program Director, and Director of Training Programs in the Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety.

As a Macy Faculty Scholar, Myers will expand the department of medicine’s quality improvement track and develop a toolkit to help establish a culture of quality and patient safety among resident physicians. 

Roberta Waite, EdD, APRN, CNS-BC—Drexel University (DU)
Waite is the Associate Professor and Assistant Dean of Academic Integration and Evaluation of Community Programs at the DU College of Nursing and Health Professions. Throughout her career she has been committed to increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of the nursing workforce to better deliver culturally competent care. As a junior faculty member, she implemented the Undergraduate Nursing Diversity Organization at DU which promotes cultural awareness, sensitivity, and support for all students in the undergraduate nursing program. Waite is currently focused on developing educational strategies to improve leadership for minority student populations to build a pipeline of nurse leaders from underrepresented groups. As an African American leader at DU, Waite is herself a role model for minority students.

In her capacity as a Macy Faculty Scholar, Waite will engage young nurses in a leadership development program that will include mentorship and interprofessional learning opportunities.

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The Macy Faculty Scholars Program is a program of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the only national foundation dedicated to improving the health of the public by advancing the education and training of health professionals.

The Foundation selects up to five faculty leaders each year to be Macy Faculty Scholars. Applications for 2012 will open December 2011. For eligibility requirements and details on the application process, please see www.josiahmacyfoundation.org/macy-scholars

To learn more about the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, visit: www.josiahmacyfoundation.org