At UME, teachers receive the benefit of a faculty development office created to address the curriculum they teach

To further foster a culture of support for the many teachers who support the MD Program, UME’s Office of Faculty Development (OFD) opened in January 2015. After successfully developing a comprehensive strategy at the Mississauga Academy of Medicine (MAM), where they delivered 286 sessions with a total attendance of over 3,000 to support Trillium Health Partners staff in their new roles as teachers, OFD Director Dr. Jana Lazor and Co-ordinator Lori Innes moved to the St. George campus to establish a new, centralized office. 

The OFD provides support for our university- and hospital-based teachers across all four of UME’s academies.  But they don’t do it alone. “It takes a village to run a program like this,” says Innes. This village is a network of partners: UME’s curriculum leaders and course directors, faculty development leads from the Faculty of Medicine’s various departments and at our partner hospitals, the Centre for Faculty Development, and others who work in partnership with the office to create and deliver development materials. “Our success comes from the enthusiasm and commitment of all our phenomenal collaborators,” affirms Dr. Lazor. “It is rewarding and energizing to see so many individuals come together to support our faculty.”

One of those collaborators is the Centre for Faculty Development, which supports faculty across the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Health Sciences, and U of T’s affiliated hospitals. “The success of the dedicated faculty development program at MAM made it clear that a UME faculty development director was needed to oversee the faculty development in alignment with UME curriculum – especially within the context of the curricular innovation happening now in both in the preclerkship and the clerkship,” notes Center for Faculty Development Director Dr. Karen Leslie on the creation of the office.

The UME OFD is tasked with delivering effective support to busy teachers across a distributed network in an environment with evolving curriculum. For example, the creation of the new Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship (LInC), required significant support to new LInC preceptors. The OFD offered evening information sessions, online resources for preceptors, and an e-newsletter to help develop this new LInC community.

Teachers from across UME have benefitted from the OFD’s offering of over 200 innovative and tailored sessions, events and resources to faculty through flexible modalities including small group workshops, orientation sessions, webinars, instructional videos, EduCafes, and podcasts since the St. George office opened.

The office is currently working with the Foundations Curriculum development teams to create faculty resources and supports for Foundations’ 2016-2017 launch.