Developing faculty leadership from ‘within’: a 12-year reflection from an internal faculty leadership development program of an academic health sciences center

Janice Y Tsoh,Anda K Kuo,John W Barr,Laney Whitcanack,Irené Merry,Brian K Alldredge,Amin N Azzam

doi:10.1080/10872981.2019.1567239

Abstract

ABSTRACTMost academic health sciences centers offer faculty leadership development programs (LDPs); however, the outcomes of LDPs are largely unknown. This article describes perspectives from our 12-year experience cultivating a formal faculty LDP within an academic health center and longitudinal outcomes of our LDP. Responding to faculty concerns from University of California San Francisco’s (UCSF) 2001 Faculty Climate Survey, UCSF established the UCSF-Coro Faculty Leadership Collaborative (FLC) in 2005. The FLC focused on building leadership skills using a cohort-based, experiential, interactive and collaborative learning approach. From 2005 to 2012, FLC has conducted training for 136 graduates over 7 cohorts with 97.6% completion rate. FLC faculty participants included 64% women and 13% underrepresented minority (URM). The proportions of graduates attaining leadership positions within UCSF such as deans or department chairs among all, URM, and women URM graduates were 9.6%, 33.3% and 45.5%, respectively. A 2013 online survey assessed 2005–2012 graduates’ perceived impacts from 8 months to 8 years after program completion and showed 91.7% of survey respondents felt the program both increased their understanding of UCSF as an organization and demonstrated the University’s commitment to foster faculty development. Qualitative results indicated that graduates perceived benefits at individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels. Though we did not directly assess impact on faculty recruitment and retention, the findings to date support cohort-based experiential learning in faculty leadership training development.

Highlights

With increasing urgency, academic health sciences centers (AHCs) and health professional organizations are recognizing the need to foster the core competency of leadership, within their workforces and organizational cultures [1,2,3]
Among the 94 AHCs in Canada and the United States that responded to a national survey from the Study of Leadership Development Programs at North American Academic Health Centers in 2015 [4], 99% of the responding AHCs provided some form of leadership development training such as informal single workshops, formal internal faculty leadership development programs (LDPs), or formal external LDPs
In 2004–05, the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Office of Academic Affairs issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a leadership training provider

Summary

Introduction

Academic health sciences centers (AHCs) and health professional organizations are recognizing the need to foster the core competency of leadership, within their workforces and organizational cultures [1,2,3]. In spite of increasing availability of leadership development opportunities, LDPs often fail to demonstrate efficacy in creating leaders [5,6,7,8,9,10]. In part, this is because of minimal program assessment. AHC LDPs most commonly deliver content in a traditional classroom format This ignores best practices for the development of leaders, which include experiential application of skills, assessment of individual personal growth, and reflection on action [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]

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