The Collaborative Scholarship Intensive: A Research-Intensive Course to Improve Faculty Scholarship

Abstract

Learning to balance the clinical, educational, and scholarly elements of an academic career is challenging for faculty. To increase research output amongst family medicine faculty with limited to no publications, we developed the Collaborative Scholarship Intensive (CSI) to provide participants with intensive instruction in research methodology coupled with structured writing support and protected time for writing. The CSI was developed by the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health as a six-session faculty development program that enrolled 23 participants in its first three classes. Findings reveal that faculty participants significantly improved their pre- to postcourse self-ratings of 12 research competencies, and significantly increased their scholarly output. Our CSI faculty development program successfully engaged clinical faculty in a collaborative research program. Our results suggest that a program focused on intensive instruction in research methodology coupled with structured writing support and protected writing time may be a model for faculty development in other academic departments.