The Society for Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM; www.stfm.org) is a community of professionals devoted to teaching family medicine through undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education. This multidisciplinary group of physicians, educators, behavioral scientists, and researchers works together to further the mission of improving the health of all people through education, research, patient care, and advocacy. STFM holds an Annual Conference each spring and a Predoctoral Education Conference each winter. STFM held its 32nd annual Predoctoral Education Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, from February 2nd to February 5th, 2006. David Irby, PhD, Vice Dean at University of California at San Francisco and a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, discussed challenges and solutions facing contemporary medical education. Mark Quirk, EdD, from the University of Massachusetts, promoted a new approach to medical education in which learning is not a body of knowledge but rather the ability to learn or generate new knowledge. Caryl Heaton, DO, from the New Jersey Medical School, combined Zen and Broadway to inspire attendees to strive for changes in teaching and practice. Participants shared ideas and learned new skills attending over 60 workshops, seminars, and discussions, as well as 35 education research and evaluation papers. Common themes included clinical skills, community medicine, technology in medical education, preceptor development, and learner and program evaluation. A subcommittee of the STFM Education Committee selected eight completed undergraduate medical educational research or curriculum evaluation papers that we felt would be of interest to readers of Teaching and Learning in Medicine. Also presented at this conference and published: Chumley H, Dobbie A, Delzell J. Case-based exercises fail to improve medical students' information management skills: A controlled trial. BioMed Central Medical Education 2006;6:14.