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