My name is Anton Alerte and I have the honor of being nominated to a position on the COMSEP Executive Committee. By way of introduction, I am a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and I have been a member of COMSEP since 2005. I am a director of pre-clinical doctoring courses at my home institution and have been active in teaching, scholarship and curricular development for over nineteen years.
I consider COMSEP my academic and familial home. To state that I would not be where I am or who I am today without COMSEP is not mere “election campaign” hyperbole. COMSEP has been the site of many of my memorable firsts (aside from my first kiss in college).
Academically, I conducted my first survey and obtained my first leadership position with the Learning Technology Task Force at COMSEP, I conducted my first workshop at COMSEP, I learned how to evaluate abstracts and posters with the Research and Scholarship Task Force at COMSEP. I learned how to create and present a poster at COMSEP. I learned how to do qualitative research at COMSEP. I published my first paper through COMSEP. I helped plan an international academic meeting (COMSEP, not ironically) at COMSEP and I learned about academic growth and planning a career path at COMSEP. Most importantly to me and my career, I learned how to teach here. I learned how to coach here (Thanks Dr. Fall!) and I learned how to mentor here.
COMSEP has also been my familial home. Outside of birth, marriage and genetics, I consider members of COMSEP my family. They are the only people I would dance in front of but more importantly they are the people who give me inspiration, a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging.
My first meeting was 2005. it was in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was my first ever meeting of any kind and I was very inexperienced, in a new place and with new people. That was also the first meeting after the loss of Drs. Miller and Sarkin, and I felt like I had walked into a family’s memorial service. I wasn’t sad, however. Indeed, I felt the loss. It was palpable and genuine and like the sound of gusts of wind blowing through the trees, it would rise up and then subside from time to time. I felt it but what I felt much, much more strongly was the joy, the joy of camaraderie, the joy of fellowship, the joy of teaching and the joy in learning. This is why COMSEP is special. Even in the dark when the times seem at their worst they are at their best. They are a bright light.
These days are not without their challenges. There is still a lot of dark out there and it would be an honor to help COMSEP “do its thing” and shine some light upon it for our students, our home institutions and for each other.
I am excited to be nominated for the Executive Committee of COMSEP. I have been a member of COMSEP for 8 years. I am a pediatric hospital medicine attending and associate professor of pediatrics at Children’s National Hospital/George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington DC. Also, I am an associate medical education director at Children’s National Hospital, specifically working as inpatient pediatric director for the Howard University College of Medicine students rotating at the hospital. As a member of COMSEP, I presented workshop and poster presentations on teaching and assessing medical students clinical reasoning. I am a contributor to the PedScripts application that was developed by the COMSEP Curriculum Task Force. It is a web base and mobile application that is available in the apple app store. I am the recipient of the 2015 COMSEP Richard T. Sarkin Foundation for Medical Education Grant. As a result of this award, I was able to publish two papers: 1) Factors that Influence the Choice of Academic Pediatrics by Underrepresented Minorities (URM), Pediatrics 2019 and 2) Factors that Influence Underrepresented in Medicine Medical Students to Pursue a Career in Academic Pediatrics, Journal of the National Medical Association 2021. Presently, I am a member of the COMSEP Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) action team. I would love the opportunity to continue to work with the great members of COMSEP by becoming a part of the Executive Committee.
Hello! I am excited about the opportunity to run for a position on the COMSEP Executive Committee. I am an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Though trained clinically as a neonatologist, I have worked in medical education throughout my faculty career, beginning with resident education in the NICU before delving into medical student education. Since 2017, I have served as Pediatric Core Clerkship Director at Hopkins and have worked on School of Medicine committees designing new teacher evaluation metrics and harmonizing medical student clinical assessment and remediation across the core clinical clerkships. In the past year, I have participated actively in revising the schoolwide clinical curriculum due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I also am a member of our school’s Educational Subcommittee that is preparing for our upcoming Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accreditation visit. Within COMSEP, I am co-leader of the Core Clerkship Collaborative, which is working to provide resources for medical educators aligned with the revised 2019 Core Curriculum. As a member of the Annual Meeting Committee, I worked with amazing colleagues this year in preparing our first virtual meeting on an important topic, “Promoting Anti-Racism through Pediatric Medical Education.” Finally, I have been honored to serve as a member of COMSEP’s Pediatrics Item Writing and Review Group (with the NBME) and represent the organization in the revision of the Alliance for Clinical Education’s manuscript on clerkship director expectations. These activities have shown me the importance of pediatric medical educators in producing quality clinicians, educators, and researchers in child health. Furthermore, COMSEP has become my second academic home, providing me with excellent professional development and a cadre of like-minded friends and medical educators. If elected, I will work tirelessly to implement this outstanding organization’s Strategic Goals, including promotion of educational excellence in pediatrics and fostering relationships with other medical education organizations. I also would like to evaluate the impact of the organization’s major educational initiatives (including the Core Clerkship and Sub-Internship curricula) on learner performance and interest in pediatrics. Thank you for your consideration!
Hello Happy COMSEPers! My name is Corki Lehmann. I have been the pediatric clerkship director in Cincinnati for about 10 years now. It has been a privilege to watch COMSEP take off as an independent organization in those years. I have been involved with COMSEP in various ways by serving as professional/faculty development collaborative chair, co-leading the group giving the clerkship director ABCs preconference workshop, and as meeting co-chair for the ill-fated 2020 Cincinnati meeting. I learned a lot listening to the COMSEP leadership call to cancel that meeting- the care and concern displayed for the members was impressive. It got me to thinking about doing more for COMSEP as it has been important in my life as my professional “home.” I have so enjoyed collaborating with my COMSEP colleagues on projects, workshops, and collaboratives. They have been a sounding board for the issues I face in my workplace and institution. I cannot imagine what life would have been like if COMSEPers had not been there for me!
As the digital age in teaching has fully arrived with COVID, I want to assist COMSEP in COVID recovery with taking a silver lining approach on how we can use what we have learned in the last year to further the mission of COMSEP. Some lessons I have learned are that our educators are resilient and clever, and that technology can be harnessed to improve the education of our students. COMSEP can expand our reach into technology to share ideas cross North America and the world in pediatric student education, if not all medical student education. I believe COMSEP should be the share point to connect and exchange ideas in real time as we go forward into the post-COVID era. I know our many collaboratives are wanting to share their materials and build education research, especially between meetings.
In our professional home, COMSEP can also foster faculty development and support our members on their academic journey. Changes in use of technology with virtual teaching in the pandemic and electronic medical records can lead to burnout. We need to band together to optimize these work flows for patient care, teaching our students, and for ourselves. We also must look out for each other and ensure all are getting treated and promoted in a fair and equitable manner. I am working with COMSEP leadership on a project to have “seasoned” COMSEP members write letters of recommendation that COMSEPers can use in their academic promotion process. I also am glad to see and fully support COMSEP efforts for diversity, equity, and inclusion. There is so much work to do there as well. We are going into a new era no doubt. I think I took for granted that COMSEP would always be there, but the pandemic has shown that is faulty thinking. It is up to all of us to make sure COMSEP will always be there for us. I want to do my part now to help in the success of this wonderful organization.