Investment in Faculty as Educational Scholars: Outcomes from the National Educational Scholars Program

Abstract

From the Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center/ University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH; Department of Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY; Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, TX; Department of Pediatrics, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Stony Brook, NY; and Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester Medical Center, A cademic institutions have strong incentives to develop faculty who are productive researchers, master clinicians, and educators. Forward-thinking institutions are encouraging their educators to become not only stellar teachers, but also productive scholars through peerreviewed dissemination of rigorously developed and evaluated curricular innovations, evaluation tools, and teaching methodologies. This emphasis on evaluation is imperative to ensure that educational programs effectively and efficiently meet the needs of the learners and the healthcare system. Even though many educator development programs train faculty to be good teachers, relatively few emphasize educational scholarship and research. Moreover, few of these are national programs offering participants the benefits of national mentoring and networking. The Educational Scholars Program (ESP) is a competitive national faculty development program created by the Academic Pediatric Association in 2006. The ESP is designed to cultivate skills in developing and evaluating curricula, conducting methodologically sound educational research, and effectively disseminating scholarly work. Mentorship and networking are key components of the ESP; each scholar is paired with a local project mentor and a national advisor with proven educational scholarship skills. Cohorts of scholars complete a 3-year longitudinal curriculum, including day-long sessions at 3 Pediatric Academic Society meetings and 6 online learning modules, each focused on specific educational scholarship skills. The cohorts form learning communities and serve as peer mentors. Scholars create an educator portfolio documenting their teaching activities and scholarly accomplishments. They also complete an educational project that they disseminate via peerreviewed publication or national presentation. The goal of this study was to describe the professional impact and value of the ESP on graduates and their institutions.