Faculty Development

                 Introduction and Organization of the Website 

SCHOLARSHIP:

The development of a successful career in academic medicine is predicated upon the systematic accumulation of a body of scholarly work. Typically, this effort is concentrated in one of four overlapping scholarly domains: That of discovery, integration, application, or teaching. This classification of scholarship, originally proposed a decade ago by The Carnegie Foundation (Boyer EL. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professiorate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990), and subsequently adopted by the Council of Academic Societies (CAS) of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), constitutes the primary organizational framework for both the SAEM Faculty Development Website and the SAEM/AACEM Faculty Development Handbook. The four types of scholarship are defined briefly below:

1. The scholarship of discovery is that of original research. This is the predominant form of scholarship that has traditionally found the greatest favor with medical institutions during the latter half of the 20th century.

2. The scholarship of integration is that of trans-disciplinary merger of information from disparate branches of science and medicine, with the goal of formulating creative and novel insights.

3. Closely allied to the scholarship of integration is the scholarship of application, which bridges the gap between theory and practice by bringing new information to bear on practical problem-solving, e.g., bench to bedside translocation of knowledge.

4. Finally, there is the scholarship of teaching, which requires intelligible communication of valid and reliable information coupled with thoughtful and coherent reasoning from a knowledgeable source to students, younger physicians, and other colleagues.  

Thus, scholars discover new knowledge, synthesize new knowledge through integration of prior knowledge, apply new knowledge to the solution of old problems, and teach new knowledge to others.  

As articulated clearly in the Society's mission statement, SAEM is dedicated to the advancement of all four domains of scholarship, each in the service of improving the care we provide to our patients. 

The website and handbook are companion pieces, developed in parallel by the Faculty Development Committee at the request of the SAEM Board of Directors. In the aggregate, the website and handbook are intended to serve as a complementary and evolving repository of information for Emergency Medicine faculty seeking ideas and assistance in advancing their scholarly interests and academic careers.

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ORGANIZATION OF THE FACULTY DEVELOPMENT WEBSITE: 

1. The Faculty Development Handbook, 1^st edition is a joint project of the SAEM Faculty Development Committee and the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine (AACEM). The focus of the Faculty Development Handbook is more circumscribed than the Academic Career Guide in the sense that the former is aimed exclusively at full-time Emergency Medicine faculty. The Academic Career Guide was targeted at a broader audience, including students and residents, in addition to faculty.  A more detailed treatment of the scope of the Handbook, which is intended to complement the Academic Career Guide, is outlined in the Preface to the Faculty Development Handbook.  

2. The Academic Career Guide, 2^nd edition, cosponsored by SAEM and EMRA, edited by Hobgood and Zink, contains 15 chapters fundamental to building an academic career, beginning at the level of the medical student and Emergency Medicine resident. This 2000 edition is an excellent, thoughtfully-written, well-organized, lucid, and much-expanded version of the 1^st edition of the Guide, originally published in 1992.

3. The webpage entitled Academic Promotion: Clinical Track, focuses upon the scholarship of teaching. This page also provides a status report on the development of clinical tracks within U.S. medical schools, describes the components and construction of the educator's teaching portfolio, reviews the experiences of various medical institutions with the clinical track, and examines methods of measuring academic contributions of clinical faculty to the overall mission of medical schools and their academic health centers.

4. The webpage entitled Academic Promotion: Traditional Track, targets the clinician-scientist engaged in the scholarship of application - and to a lesser extent the scholarship of integration and discovery. This site provides a working definition of clinical investigation, contrasting it with the other major component of the Traditional track, i.e., that of basic scientific research and its scholarly domain of discovery. The site also reviews the severe shortage of clinical investigators in all disciplines and explores current impediments to the development of clinician-scientists, particularly in Emergency Medicine. The importance of obtaining specialized training in clinical investigation is emphasized, and various means of achieving this goal are presented. Funding opportunities in both the public and private sector are described, with an emphasis on NIH funding mechanisms and grantsmanship. Finally, the status of tenure in the traditional track is examined. The Traditional Track website closes with three pieces on research as a career in Emergency Medicine, written by emergency physicians who have been, and continue to be, successful investigators.  

5. Faculty development targeted at Minorities, particularly under-represented minorities, has a link from this homepage.  

6. Similarly, there is a link from the homepage pertinent to faculty development among Women. 

7. Sabbaticals, conferences, seminars, and opportunities for distance learning that may contribute in a wide variety of ways to academic career development can be found on this webpage

8. Finally, the website closes with a number of additional links and an annotated bibliography of faculty development pertinent to academic career development. 

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Faculty development in Emergency Medicine is an ongoing process. Optimally, it begins in the earliest possible stages of a career and continues throughout the remainder of one's academic life. The Faculty Development Committee hopes the information you find here will be of some help in furthering your own career as an academic emergency physician.

The Faculty Development Committee would be particularly grateful for notification of any errors, deadlinks, additional references, or new links that might be of interest to academic emergency physicians. Please forward comments to saem@saem.org.