William C. Wadland, MD, MS,
named to F. Marian Bishop Fellowship

William C. Wadland, MD, MS, has been selected as a Fellow by The F. Marian Bishop Charitable Trust Leadership Program effective July 2005. This one-year fellowship program identifies and develops qualified senior family medicine faculty to successfully assume positions of greater responsibility in academic medicine. Dr. Wadland is Chair of the Michigan State University (MSU) Department of Family Medicine and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Development in the MSU College of Human Medicine.

The fellowship is sponsored through the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), and includes the use of self-development, mentorships with current deans, and formal educational programs. As part of the fellowship, The Bishop Fellows simultaneously become American Council on Education (ACE) Leadership Fellows and participate in three ACE seminars during the fellowship year. Thus, Wadland also has joined a select group of 40 Fellows from across the country in this year’s prestigious ACE Fellows Program.

Established in 1965, the ACE Fellows Program is one of the longest-running leadership-development programs in the United States and focuses on identifying and preparing senior leadership for the nation’s colleges and universities. “The ACE Fellows Program combines seminars, interactive learning opportunities, campus events and placement at another higher education institution to condense years of on-the-job experience and skills development into a single semester or year.” according to its sponsor, the American Council on Education.

As a Bishop Fellow, Wadland chose the University of Washington’s medical school as his host institution. He will visit the campus three times to receive mentoring from host faculty, with Dr. Paul Ramsey, Dean of the University of Washington Medical School, as his primary mentor.

He says of this opportunity, “I want to learn about their educational arrangements, their faculty development programs, and how they balance high value for primary care with a research mission. It’s very successful. I feel I can bring much of that back, with some fresh ideas. But my focus will be, really, on faculty development programs.”

The University of Washington also has broad community connections, with the involvement of multiple states. The medical school has a rural focus through their WWAMI network, which geographically includes Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. Wadland notes, “They have affiliation agreements and arrangements in that huge network which I think I can learn from, because we have similar arrangements with multiple communities at the MSU College of Human Medicine.”

He anticipates the opportunity to learn from other faculty, in addition to his primary mentor. Christina Surawicz, MD, Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs, has developed leadership programs for UW faculty, particularly for their mid-career faculty who are clinical educators. Dr. Tom Norris, a family physician is Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and is head of the American Board of Family Physicians is guiding UW through curriculum change and expansion of their class size. Dr. John Coombs is in charge of the WWAMI program, and is Vice Dean for Communities.

The fellowship includes attendance at three week-long ACE seminars. The focus of the first seminar, “Back to the Future: The Technological University,” has already generated fresh ideas for how the MSU College of Human Medicine can make appropriate use of technology in learning.

As part of his Fellowship, Wadland will be responsible for development of a project in the area of Faculty Affairs and Development. He has no shortage of ideas, and anticipates focusing on projects that are already underway at MSU. He particularly mentions three that he will track through the Fellowship year: “I’m interested in a mentor program we are rolling out for tenure track faculty in the fall. I want to analyze the success of that,” he notes. He also has ideas for project involvement in leadership training for mid-career clinician educators – people who become medical directors of clinics or residency directors. Finally, he wants to utilize the newly developed Faculty Activities Tracking System that has recently been introduced at MSU.