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Education News Highlights of the Association of American Medical Colleges Council of Faculty and Academic Societies (AAMC-CFAS) Annual Meeting Marieke Kruidering (University of California-San Francisco) and Joe Blumer (Medical University of South Carolina) as junior and senior faculty society representatives, respectively, represented ASPET at the 2022 Association of American Medical Colleges Council of Faculty and Academic Societies (AAMCCFAS) annual meeting. ASPET participates as an AAMC-CFAS member society. CFAS provides a platform for faculty at academic medical centers to identify critical issues facing medical school faculty and academic societies and provide a voice for faculty in the creation and implementation of AAMC programs. A total of 130 AAMC-CFAS representatives attended the 2022 annual meeting, held virtually on April 11–13. The AAMC-CFAS featured topics including the relationship between faculty and institutional leadership, shared governance structures, leadership development, faculty wellbeing, professional identity for faculty, and the influence of diversity, equity and inclusion on the faculty experience. Several sessions centered around the intersection and interaction between leadership of academic medical centers (e.g., CEOs, presidents, chancellors) and faculty. The first session highlighted the intrinsic value of academic medicine, in particular research, discovery, and education, to non-medical leadership who may be more focused on fiscal concerns. Examples of such intrinsic value include innovation and discovery, lower mortality rates for patients admitted to teaching hospitals at academic medical centers compared to non-teaching hospitals and the energy of students and trainees that helps foster stimulating research and
The Pharmacologist • June 2022
learning environment. Participants indicated that many institutions do not appear to be sufficiently valuing faculty contributions to their missions; this was felt particularly among basic science faculty who perceive more value being placed on the clinical enterprise rather than research and education. The attendees also expressed concerns about the merging of basic science departments and the increasing number of non-tenure track faculty who feel they have very little voice, whose employment can be easily terminated, and who feel viewed as second-class citizens in academic medical centers. In response, the AAMC-CFAS Mission Alignment Committee advocates for a strong faculty voice to ensure that governance structures ultimately serve core departmental missions. Given the many governance models that exist, CFAS is exploring pros and cons of the various models to help identify what a healthy governance structure looks like so that faculty can feel supported. Sessions on the second day focused on leadership, including the journey from faculty to institutional leadership, drawing from personal experiences from the invited speakers. Leadership development was emphasized as part of the new 10-part AAMC strategic plan (see https://www.aamc.org/what-we-do/ strategic-plan/healthier-future-all-aamc-strategicplan#actionplans), in which Plan #6 seeks to enhance the skills and capacity of people in academic medicine. AAMC’s leadership development initiative will allow member institutions to grow and diversify their leadership pipelines with increased access through new delivery models. Models include offering
