1999 Highlights

Faculty Development

The first half of the year focused on establishing the UMass Faculty Development Team, and developing plans for the content, methods and evaluation of Macy faculty development efforts. The UMass team has met regularly throughout the entire year, with activities intensifying during the fall. These activities included: conducting faculty development needs assessments with the directors of the PPS course, core clerkships, and teaching affiliates, and collaborating with PPS Course Directors to develop communication skills-related sessions for PPS 1&2. A regional, multi-school workshop on "Conducting Needs Assessments" was held for faculty, and a University-based program was sponsored on "Teaching Cross Cultural Medicine."

In a collaboration involving the Faculty Development and Evaluation teams at UMass, the development of an OSTE (Objective Structured Teaching Exercise) was initiated to measure teaching competencies of faculty regarding their teaching and communication skills. The two teams are also collaborating on the development of an evaluation plan for faculty development.