2023 COMSEP Leadership Elections

I’ve had over forty years of experience in sensitive corporate environments and in academia.  During my earlier career, my roles allowed me great autonomy, which help me to develop leadership skills; and opportunities to be innovative is developing community programs and/or in finding solutions to problems related to how people worked.   As a teacher, I was involved in redefining curriculums, making them applicable, and then implementing them in support of my wide range of learners.  My work at IBM was at a time when “personal computers” were new, Microsoft Windows was in its infancy and the “world-wide web” didn’t exist. I worked with our “end user” base, who had never used a mouse, to identify new ways of thinking about how they wanted to work and recommend more usable design solutions to our software design teams. I grew significantly in my understanding of technology and its possible applications. I continued to apply those experiences and that knowledge to a wide variety of tasks and project initiatives in other roles and currently.

I’ve been a Pediatric Clerkship Administrator for the past seventeen years at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.  My responsibilities have included onboarding and coordinating two large clerkships, a large GW Pediatric electives program and assisting with PA students.  I quickly transition tasks from paper to electronic processes and learned the ways of Blackboard, E*Value, MedHub, and other web-based applications.  During the past six years, I’ve mainly onboarded/coordinated the GW clerkship/elective programs, served as the liaison from medical student education with the hospital onboarding/ EMR application process, and was an integral contributor to going totally virtual when Covid-19 halted our way of working. I’ve had several opportunities to work on research projects during the methods phase as a co-planner and/or implementor. I was included as a co-author on one publication for my work.

Currently I’m the outgoing collaborative Leader for the Administrators collaborative.  During my 13 years as a COMSEP member, I’ve been actively involved with the Administrators group, task force and now collaborative. I participated in the planning of many of our convention general sessions, and as collaborative leader for the past four years.  I co-designed our general session from 2019-22; lead the restructuring of our collaborative to function be structured more in-line with COMSEP collaboratives; and conceptualized the use of interest’s groups, of which we have six, to encourage focused work on areas that affect us.  I co-designed mini workshops to encourage abstract writing for workshops; co-lead the effort to define our leadership roles and responsibilities; and co-authored three accepted abstract submissions. I’ve also served as a presenter in several other workshop events.  I am currently a member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resource and Advisory Committee, the Annual Meeting Committee (AMC), and have served as an abstract reviewer for past two years.

I’ve met so many inspiring leaders in COMSEP, have aspired to grow and be like them and developed good friendships.  I am committed to the ideals of this organization and to medical student education.  I would be honored to be elected as an At-Large Member for the Executive Committee.

Like many at COMSEP, I consider the organization my educational and professional home.  When I think of the most rewarding projects, areas of inquiry, and relationships in my career, they almost all stem in one way or another from COMSEP.   COMSEP is the place, and the people, that I look forward to revisiting the most each year. I have tried to pay this debt back in a variety of ways over the years, serving the organization in a variety of ways.  I have served as a co-chair of the Curriculum Task Force and, after the transition, of the Core Clerkship Collaborative.    I have been a co-editor of the Journal Club since 2016.   I’ve also tried to help in smaller ways, welcoming new members, mentoring junior faculty in obtaining COMSEP grants, helping other members and providing feedback as they submitted workshops and abstracts, and supporting peers across the country in their promotion processes. Serving on the Executive Committee would allow me to continue my attempts to pay back and also allow me to keep working on making sure COMSEP stays the dynamic, nurturing and fun organization that it has always been for me.

COMSEP is my medical education home, and the nurturing COMSEP community is instrumental in shaping my scholarly growth. I was a one-week-old clerkship director when I attended my first COMSEP meeting in 2003 in Denver, CO. Soon after it was clear to me that COMSEP is the ‘Go To’ support group and source of expertise. It helped me sponsor the first faculty development activity in my home department. I also changed the curriculum to COMSEP’s and added CLIPP Cases to the clerkship, which supported the preparation for the LCME accreditation. I was a member of the COMSEP Curriculum Task Force (2003-2010) and participated in the 2005 revision of the COMSEP Curriculum. Additionally, I contributed to the Research and Scholarship Task Force/Collaborative as a member (2011-date) and as co-leader (2017-2022). My background is that I grew up, did my undergraduate training, and worked for few years in Sudan before immigrating to the USA in 1994 where I did my residency and worked before I moved to Qatar, a melting pot of dense multicultural influence.  I believe my journey enriched my experience and trained me to approach tasks and issues according to the prevailing context. As an academician exposed to many cultures and medical education settings equipes me to contribute to the COMSEP mission and adding a different perspective to discussions, including the DEI viewpoint. Some ideas I would raise for consideration to the Executive Committee: Professor Round faculty development initiative for all poster presenters as in other international conferences, like AMEE and APMEC, besides the learner’s voice and students’ membership initiatives.

Hello fellow COMSEPers! UCSF is my home institution, and I have been active in COMSEP for over 10 years. I have worked with COMSEPers on scholarship and numerous workshops, all of which have shaped my identity as a medical educator. I am past co-leader of the COMSEP Curriculum Committee and of the COMSEP Post-Clerkship Collaborative, and at UCSF I have multiple formal roles supporting students across all years/stages of medical school training. I am deeply committed to DEI: I was one of the first at UCSF to become a UCSF DEI Champion, I am a faculty mentor for the UCSF Pediatrics RISE (Resident-led Physicians for Inclusion, Social justice, and Equity) Coalition, and in my formal mentoring roles I support numerous students who identify as Underrepresented in Medicine throughout their medical school journeys. I look forward to bringing to the committee my experiences and lessons learned, and to continuing to learn how to best advance COMSEP’s long-term commitment to ensuring inclusivity and to championing changes to address inequity.  I love COMSEP… my greatest education leadership joys have come from collaboration with COMSEPers to create curricula, enact projects, and improve the educational environment. To this position I would bring my enthusiasm, my creative mind, my collaborative problem-solving skills, my passion for supporting learners and understanding their unique perspectives, my dedication to excellence, and a genuine commitment to represent the needs of all in our diverse community who call COMSEP their academic and professional “home.”

I have been a member of COMSEP since 2013 when I first became co-director of the Pediatrics clerkship at UC Davis.  Since then, my roles at UC Davis have changed; after time in the clerkship and as our Post-Clerkship Director, I helped lead the implementation of a new School of Medicine curriculum and become the Executive Director of Clinical Skills Education.  My involvement in COMSEP has varied over the years as well and has included facilitating workshops at the annual meetings, co-leading the Post Clerkship Collaborative, serving on the Annual Meeting Planning and Nominations/Awards Committees and now working on a study funded by the COMSEP Grant. What hasn’t changed in these 10 years since I joined is the important role of COMSEP in creating community, providing resources for its members, and leading an ever-changing world of medical education in Pediatrics.  More than ever, our students need us to stay cutting edge in our approach to their education and need our support as they navigate the complex residency application process.  Our members need the resources and mentoring from COMSEP to ensure we can continue to do more with less as we work to ensure we are training a generation of pediatricians who represent those they care for.  It would be an honor for me to contribute to this work via membership on the COMSEP Executive Committee.   Thank you for your consideration.

I would be delighted to have the opportunity to serve COMSEP and the membership as a member of the Executive Committee at Large, and feel so appreciative of this nomination. I am an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and practice Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Boston Medical Center.  I became the pediatric clerkship director in 2013, and subsequently transitioned to the Director of Pediatric Undergraduate Medical Education for the department. In the coming academic year, I will move into a new position overseeing the fourth-year pediatric curriculum, advising, and residency preparedness – a role inspired by the work I have done through COMSEP.

When I first attended COMSEP as a new clerkship director in 2013, I was immediately struck by the warmth of the group and the way mentorship was not only valued, but woven into the fabric of the community.  With the support of these mentors, I have presented various workshops at COMSEP, as well as taken new skills “home” by incorporating innovative teaching practices into my school’s curriculum and mentoring medical students in their scholarly and educational work.  My interest was piqued by the Career Advising Collaborative (CAC), as I have always loved advising medical students, and currently serve as one of the collaborative leaders.  Through the CAC, I attended as one of COMSEP’s representatives to the “Pediatrics 2025 AMSPDC Workforce Initiative” in 2020 and continue to work closely with this group and the associated Residency Recruitment Action Team. It is this work which motivates my upcoming change in role.

My years with COMSEP have truly shaped me as an educator and helped me hone my career interests.  I am grateful for what the organization and its membership have given to me and would be honored to have a role in giving back through working with the EC at large and helping to support the growth and professional success of my COMSEP colleagues.