Contact:Jennifer Bush202-828-0041[email protected]
For Immediate Release
DEFINITION AND ASSESSMENT OF FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP THE FOCUS OF ACADEMIC MEDICINE
Council of Academic Societies Explores Evolving Definition of Scholarship
Washington, D.C., September 19, 2000-The evolving definition of scholarship and its assessment at U.S. medical schools are the focus of the September issue of AAMC's Academic Medicine, www.academicmedicine.org. At the invitation of AAMC's Council of Academic Societies (CAS) Task Force on Scholarship, more than a dozen leading faculty members and administrators authored pieces on topics related to the evolving definition of scholarship within the academic medical community that are published in the journal's theme issue entitled, "Expanding the View of Scholarship." Diana S. Beattie, Ph.D., West Virginia University School of Medicine, chairs the CAS task force.
The four areas of scholarship as defined by Ernest L. Boyer and Charles Glassick of the Carnegie Foundation, are the scholarship of discovery, the scholarship of integration, the scholarship of application, and the scholarship of teaching. The scholarship of discovery-research-has for decades been the primary focus for promotion and tenure of medical school faculty, even though the faculty also have major and critical activities in the other areas of scholarship. In this special edition of Academic Medicine, five case reports describe different approaches to applying the four areas of scholarship to the evaluation of faculty activities in medical schools.
"We hope that the ideas put forth in this special theme issue will produce a continuing dialogue as faculty and administrators at medical schools reflect on the value of these different forms of scholarship, their application by medical school faculty, and their contributions to the individual missions of each medical school and teaching hospital," writes Dr. Beattie. "The CAS hopes that these articles will provide a stimulus for continuing discussions of this important area of academic life."
The AAMC's CAS represents the faculty leadership of U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals through representation from 91 member professional organizations. CAS' mission is to assist faculty in pursuing their research, education, and patient care responsibilities. The CAS Scholarship Task Force was formed in 1998. Founding members of the task force discovered that as scholarship in medical schools has changed, the traditional reward measurement systems have not kept up and are in need of review. For example, most promotion and tenure committees still view research papers printed in standard journals as the only real measure of scholarship.
AAMC's Academic Medicine is the oldest English-language peer-reviewed journal devoted to issues related to the training of physicians. The journal recently went online at http://www.academicmedicine.org.
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The Association of American Medical Colleges represents the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools; the 16 accredited Canadian medical schools; some 400 major teaching hospitals, including 74 Veterans Administration medical centers; 91 academic and professional societies representing nearly 88,000 faculty members; and the nation's 67,000 medical students and 102,000 residents.Additional information about the AAMC and U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals available at http://www.aamc.org/newsroom.
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