One of the senior faculty members who provided “Insight from the Editors” is James H. Eberwine, Ph.D., shown here with Jacqueline Morris, a doctoral candidate in pharmacology.
should be submitted? A paper with “gravitas” rather than merely a “slice” of research. How do we order the authors’ names on our paper? “It’s an art more than a science”; consult your mentor. How do I deal with “variants” in the data? “Be scrupulously honest. What’s the point of doing science if you’re not going to do it in a brutally honest way? Why would you waste your time in such a hideously difficult field? So do the right thing at all times.” And what does the younger faculty say they gain from this course? Some replies from ADVANCE’s surveys: a sense of “how the whole process works from the reviewers’ perspective”; that they “feel OK to reach out to editors”; that they now have “good insight into difficultto-obtain information.”
ADVANCE advancing ADVANCE draws 90 percent of its panelists and teachers from the medical faculty, who admire the supportive environment afforded their new colleagues. Mulhern sums up what she hears from them: “We wish we could have had something like this, but we didn’t know, we just went blindly along.” She then notes: “The faculty who say that sort of thing – we count on them to
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run these programs, as volunteers. They never turn us down, except for schedule conflicts.” The program works closely with the vice chairs for faculty affairs and professional development, a new category of administrator that a growing number of departments have established, and with other Penn schools. It anticipates a close relationship with Penn Medicine’s vice dean for diversity and inclusion, a new post, filled this summer by Eve J. Higginbotham, S.M., M.D. The program uses many means to reach its constituents: among them, classes visits to departmental meetings (where faculty may feel more comfortable airing issues, Mulhern says), one-on-ones, uploaded videos, webinars, e-mails. It also provides links to other resources. For instance, from its web site, readers can access Penn-based material such as “Introduction to Clinical Research Methodology” or the University’s Center for Teaching and Learning; or go to external sites such as the N.I.H.’s for tutorials on grant applications. Certain ADVANCE classes qualify for continuing medical education credit, but virtually all of them get high marks in FAPD surveys. The teachers generally
score 100-percent approval (top two of five categories), and the utility of the courses usually ranges from 70 to 85 percent, sometimes reaching 100. Students frequently praise the teaching method. After taking the course on making effective presentations, a student wrote: “I really appreciated the format she used – having participants actually give a presentation and field questions. Very original and useful. I felt like I was doing a developmental program.” A postdoc couldn’t even wait until she needed Colston’s writing course to take it. She then remarked, “I don’t yet have a paper to work on, but I would love to come again when I have a draft of my own to submit.” Lisa Bellini, M.D., G.M.E. ’90, a professor of medicine who serves as vice dean for faculty and resident affairs, is not surprised at ADVANCE’s reception. “It has diverse offerings for people with different interests,” she says, “and it is building up a lot of steam, judging by more and more people taking its courses.” As Mulhern points out, it serves a genuine need: “People say, ‘It’s really hard here.’ Yes, it is. The bar is very, very high. You have to have a strategic plan, and it’s not intuitive. You have to have help doing that – and we have plenty of people around here who are happy to offer that help.” Most of all, says Saunders, whose Faculty 2000 Project started it all, “it’s had the kind of influence that I would have hoped for. It’s created a sense that the institution cares. It may sound corny, but to me that was an important concept, almost more important than any of the content – that the place cares about you. You then gain an affinity, an affection, for the institution.”
Update: Rachael Berget has joined Cooper Medical School of Rowan University as director of Faculty Affairs and Educational Operations.