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Thomas R. Viggiano, MD, is our guest on the Faculty Factory this week. Dr. Viggiano was an associate dean for faculty affairs at Mayo Clinic for 17 years. He is currently a gastroenterology specialist with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Dr. Viggiano is one of the founders of the AAMC’s Group on Faculty Affairs (GFA) and we discuss that journey on today’s show. We also discuss faculty vitality and wellness.
He was always served as an educator throughout his career. He was appointed as a Harvard Macy Faculty Scholar where he applied quality improvement principles to curriculum evaluation. From that experience, he learned about the value of having mentors and funding seeing first hand what it could accomplish in designing innovations in education scholarship.
“Being able to make education a respectable and rigorous academic enterprise within one of our institutions was a passion,” he said.
In the opening minutes of this podcast, Dr. Viggiano describes the genesis of the GFA. He also talks about how his work with faculty affairs came off the heels of a survey that found not one medical school in North American reported they had a comprehensive program in place to support faculty.
Dr. Viggiano brings a lot of insight to these early days of the GFA. He tells a story about when his dean asked him to become the dean of faculty affairs. This essentially led to him having to figure out his own job description.
“It was the best offer ever. I got to write my own job description, and there was a lot of work to start doing,” he said.
Towards the end of today’s episode we also discuss how we tend to derive meaning from our work when we feel we are making a difference.
I felt very inspired after this discussion, and it left me with some new goals and things to think about. I love being able to host this podcast as it allows me to gain an even deeper appreciation for what we do in faculty development.
I hope you enjoy today’s episode and find it as helpful as I did! Please make sure to listen to the entire episode through the embedded podcast player located above, or by visiting our Podcast Homepage.