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Darrell G. Kirch, MD, is president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Dr. Kirch is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He has held several, major leadership positions including scientific director at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Learn more.
Transcription
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Dr. Skarupski: Welcome back to the “Faculty Factory Podcast.” I’m Kim Skarupski. On today’s episode, we have Dr. Darrell Kirch, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Boom! Dr. Kirch, how are you today?
Dr. Kirch: I’m terrific. And I’m so pleased to be joining the podcast.
Dr. Skarupski: We are so thrilled to have you here. Everybody, I’m sure, is bated breath waiting to hear all the wisdom, and your experience, and stories for us. I’m curious, how in the world did a psychiatrist and neuroscientist find himself to be the president of the AAMC?
Dr. Kirch: Well, the bottom line is it certainly wasn’t planned. I’m always struck by how interesting it is for each of us to find the path that we really like in academic medicine. I never actually considered even being a faculty member until I was a resident. What interested me at that time was a mentor who engaged me in some research with him. And when I queried him about staying on the faculty, he said, “I think that would be great for you, but you really need to broaden your horizons.” Because I’d been an undergraduate, medical school graduate, and residency graduate all at the same institution, the University of Colorado.
He helped me get to NIH. And early on, I thought I might be on a research-intensive career, and I ended up staying at NIH for over a decade mainly because opportunities that I hadn’t planned on, I hadn’t expected, kept arising. And one of the things was totally unexpected was at a research meeting, a colleague I knew who was on the Search Committee for a dean at the Medical College of Georgia, asked if I might want to be a candidate. I immediately said I’d be honored.
If I’d thought about it, I would have realized having been at NIH ever since my residency, I was probably the worst equipped person in the United States to become a dean. But for whatever reason, they chose me, and through a steep learning curve, and some wonderful colleagues who understood faculty affairs, promotion, and tenure, the student affairs side of things, these colleagues just formed into a great team. I think that’s the skill I brought, I had learned how to build teams, but this was in a totally new venue.
It turned out, if I’d been a critical observer, I would have been very suspicious about that deanship since it had 10 turnovers in the dean’s office in the prior decade. A series of interims, and a series… They had one permanent dean who only lasted 90 days, which just goes to show with the right support from people, we can accomplish a lot of things. So I think at this point, I’m the longest tenured dean they’ve had since World War II.
I also took on responsibility for the health system, and then seven years later, took on those combined roles at Penn State after their failed merger with the Geisinger Health System. And it was at that point, having been deeply embedded in research, leadership, and then academic leadership, and then adding health system leadership, that the AAMC really felt like a natural home. I’d enjoyed the Council of Deans, and I was honored to be asked to consider following Jordan Cohen, my predecessor, who’s a true giant in academic medicine. So a nonlinear career that was largely unplanned turned into the perfect preparation to work with this great, complex organization that is the AAMC.
Dr. Skarupski: Now I’m curious, you said something about a mentor back at…I think it was UC Denver, who said, “No, you need to set your sights bigger.” And you said he’s the one who got you into NIH. What do you think he observed, or he noticed in you, that made you in his mind’s a good candidate for leadership outside of the lab, or outside of the clinic? What do you think? I mean, you mentioned team building, so would you tell the GFA family, and the people who are listening now that you have some innate skill? Or had you been practicing or expressed interest in leadership by books or something? I’m curious, you know, what is that thing that you had that made someone take notice and push you along?
Dr. Kirch: Yeah, he’s gone on to be an internationally recognized research leader, and we’ve remained good friends. And he says that what was driving him mainly was he thought I had some raw potential. But he knew that it would be…that while he would have benefited more, by keeping me there, he wanted me to get the benefits of broadened horizons. So in a sense, I think what mentors and sponsors, one of the best things they sometimes do for us is kick us out of the nest. And I think he saw that I was comfortable, and I was doing fine where I was, but he wanted me to test my limits more. And that was a very generous and gracious thing for him to do.
Dr. Skarupski: Oh, my goodness.
Dr. Kirch: Not every mentor is willing to…when they’re benefiting from the work of somebody give that away for the benefit of possibly advancing that person’s career.
Dr. Skarupski: That’s definite true, true mentorship, as you said, generous and selfless. You’re very fortunate. So over these years, you know, as you’re winding down your tenure at AAMC, you certainly noticed patterns, and trends, and big changes in academic affairs, or faculty development over the year. So what kind of jumps out at you, as you look back now, in the academic affairs space of things you’ve noticed or observed that have kind of remained in your mind now?
Dr. Kirch: When I became dean, first, in 1994, I was amazed at how much medical school had not changed since I was a med student and resident. I mean, it was still very focused on departments, and sections, and the individual effort. And so into the ’90s, when you talked about faculty development, it was generally viewed that, well, a good chair and a good section chief will help a faculty member grow in any way they need to.
And there simply wasn’t this concept, that having some centralized support for that effort, could be much more beneficial for the professional progression of faculty members. Then hoping that department chairs and section chief developed faculty by spontaneous combustion, you know. They’re great people, highly skilled, they weren’t students of professional development or faculty development, they didn’t really think as much about how one built a portfolio to advance as a faculty member.
And for me, when I saw the power as a dean of having a centralized function, and how more and more, it didn’t take chairs and section chiefs totally out of the loop. But a centralized faculty affairs academic affairs function could really potentiate their efforts, not conflict with them. And then I saw the benefits, just simply having fewer problems, with promotion and tenure cases, going forward with appointments, being able to develop schoolwide leadership programs targeted for different cohorts, and different levels of development. And all the benefits that accrued to that and just making the institution more effective.
And you know, it was really rewarding for me to see some of these people who are my mentors, in the areas of faculty affairs, faculty development, become really the individuals who drove the creation of the GFA, which is now one of the stronger groups in the AAMC, and does incredibly important work on making sure that we develop the talent we have, that we don’t just turn them off on their own, and hope they sink or swim. But that we can add real support to them from a centralized function.
Dr. Skarupski: I love that idea of trying to disband or move away from this idea that faculty development happens via spontaneous combustion, I love that idea. Because when I came to Hopkins, six years ago, I met with a department director who said, “Basically, you know, faculty development happens at the local level. We take care of it here at the department level.” And I appreciate that, and certainly, have a lot of respect for what happens that needs to be tailored at those local levels.
But I felt badly after that conversation, because I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, he doesn’t appreciate, you know, that centralized component, as you talked about, potentiating efforts. And kind of trying to capitalize on the wealth of knowledge that we’ve come up with tools and programs.
And so I remember feeling a little bit dismissed at that meeting. And so there’s still some of, you know, that feeling that it does happen by spontaneous combustion. And back in the day, when I was a faculty member, you just write the grants, you know, get the papers, see your patients, you just gotta put your nose down and work. And so I appreciate your awareness and recognition of the value of our combined efforts.
Dr. Kirch: I think what I was especially disappointed in hearing was… I would try to, as often as possible, if somebody was leaving the institution, meet with them briefly to just find out what their experience had been like, and why they were going. And I had too many cases where junior faculty member felt that they were…that there had been a kind of bait and switch with them. That they’ve been drawn with the promise of, you know, the ability to develop an academic career with its different dimensions, but then it had turned into sink or swim, pretty much left to their own devices.
I recall junior clinician faculty, saying that they felt they’d been used as cannon fodder, they’d been put in extremely intensive clinical positions to, you know, grind out patient visits, and surgical procedures and so on, but that the development support wasn’t there. And that for me was really eye-opening. It was clearly a professional failure on my part, on the part of others, to not pay it forward. We benefited from support so often, and mentorship and professional development. And if we were backing away from that, that was a real failure for us in academic leadership.
I think though while there are still people who would kind of prefer to run their departments in relative autonomy and isolation, just the robust nature of the GFA as a group, and the content that we see at the annual meeting in November, and see at the GFA spring meetings, summer meetings, just proves that it isn’t just that a beachhead has been established, I think the precedent is firmly established now. And I don’t see several regressing from that.
Dr. Skarupski: Thank God, yeah, you’re right. I just love the idea that you talk about this, this feeling of bait and switch. And my heart breaks, too, because I still think, you know, despite the fact that you go back to the ’90s and you remember this culture, I still see evidence of that happening, where despite having this nice infrastructure and these resources, and so many different seminars, and workshops, and programs for faculty, so we built this up. But I talk about it sometimes like I feel like I’m walking around at a really busy restaurant with this beautiful, beautiful tray of just gorgeous looking desserts that are just wonderful. And that all the diners there just watch me walking around going, “Oh, that’s lovely, it looks beautiful, it looks delicious.” I’m still however waiting for bread and water. And you’re running around trying to serve us these decadent desserts.
And so sometimes I feel like maybe we still have a little bit of that bait and switch. Because we’ve built up a lot of faculty development, and academic affairs processes, and yet, we’re still walking around enticing these poor faculty members who are running 100 miles an hour. And they say, “I’d love to slow down and do that. But excuse me, I have to get on, you know, EPIC, and chart and get papers, and get grants, and do committee work, and do regulatory compliance modules.”
So it’s such a tough time when you have something you know that’s good for professional development, but they’re simply carving out that time and helping department directors recognize the value in that investment of someone’s career is that still, to me, a struggle. Do you see that with other folks and institutions?
Dr. Kirch: I do, I hear it when I visit campuses. And where I really sense it is, you know, we do the professional development programs for early and mid-career women and early and mid-career minority faculty. And they’re hungry for strategies, advice, lessons learned on how they can, despite the demands on them, can move forward in their aspirations for their future academic careers. I think one of the saddest things is when someone will say to me, “I attended that program, I was so inspired and excited, but when I got back to the home campus, it seemed to evaporate pretty quickly under, you know, the crisis of the day.”
So I feel…I mean, the AAMC is very committed to expanding its programs. These programs are all oversubscribed, which means the demand is out there. But I think in the end, it does take an institutional commitment to say… People laugh now when we talk about protected time. But protected time for some professional development, you know, is a great investment compared to faculty turnover and burnout.
Dr. Skarupski: That’s right, we’ve got the data, you know, demonstrating this, what you lose when a faculty member walks out the door. Now, here’s just something just popped in my head, this idea of protected time and setting aside X number of hours per year for professional development. How would that ever get into an LCME kind of a process? Do you envision that that would be something where just as LCME comes and make sure we’re, you know, abiding by all many other guidelines, would that be something that you think would ever be formalized? How do you think that would go over?
Dr. Kirch: I am not sure it would become a standard. And, you know, maybe I can back up and say a bit about how I think we got into this trap. When I first heard people talk about protected time, even when I was a resident, there was the assumption that that meant that every junior faculty member, you know, was going to be given these many hours, or these afternoons, or whatever, a week to do scholarly work, preferably research, that would lead to an NIH grant that would lead to a second grant and so on.
And there was a lot of discussion about, you know, that the protected time was so that everybody could develop into a triple threat. The reality is that while there are a few individuals who I think represent triple threats, they were people who did it serially, not simultaneously. So the notion of the master clinician seeing boatloads of patients, writing boatloads of papers, getting boatloads of grants and teaching students and residents, it just doesn’t fit with human limitations anymore.
And so I think that what we…just as we’ve gotten away from talking so much about the triple threat, I think we’re getting better at acknowledging that some people are educational intensivist, some people are academic affairs intensivist, some people are clinical intensivist, even if they’re primary care physicians. You know, that people find their strong suits, and their paths, and their passions. And our job in faculty development, I don’t think is just to give amorphous blocks of time to people and say, “Okay, now use that time and develop.”
But it’s instead to help people figure out where their passions really lie, and where their talents are. And to show them that all these career pathways can be extremely rewarding. You know, I was recently at a school with somebody who had been the student affairs dean there for 30 years, and was every bit as enthusiastic today as he was, I’m sure when he started. You know, that was the right pathway for him. So, I though came up in a world of academic medicine where that was somehow viewed as a lesser role.
The world though, I think, is shifting. I think of somebody who was very active in Faculty Affairs, Toni Ganzel at Louisville, who has become a real leader among the deans. When 10 or 15 years ago, no one would have thought that coming as she did from more of an academic affairs, faculty affairs track would become the dean.
So I think the world is shifting, and again, it’s no longer a notion of I’ll just give you an afternoon, a week, and you’ll do something great. It’s more purposeful, how do we figure out where your passions really lie? It took me awhile obviously, at first, I thought if it was research. It took me a long time to think that maybe my passion was focused on just trying to help the organization thrive, whatever organization I was in.
Dr. Skarupski: So you talk about, you know, mentorship over and over and over again. So this idea that we’re talking about now about dedicating some protected time to find our passions, find our talents, help our faculty identify their unique gifts, when perhaps many of them have just been so laser-focused on undergraduate medical education, their residency, internship, fellowship, and postdoc and postdoc fellowship. And just so laser-focused without maybe perhaps stopping to pause and say, “Wait a minute, you know, what are my values? What does get me excited?”
So that kind of a model of helping faculty members identify those unique treasures and talents sounds to me like it’s a lot more labor intensive for mentors, section chief department, directors, faculty development folks. Because that sounds really like precision faculty development to me. We’ve talked about precision medicine, precision education, and Charlie Urban from Vermont, and I, we’re giving an Ignite session at the PDC, the Professional Development Conference in Chicago in July. Talking about this concept of brand new that I started noodling around with is, what is precision faculty development?
It sounds like that may be what you’re implying that we need to do. It’s almost like Individual development planning with faculty members, where they are now, their unique strengths, the weak links in their own chains, and tailoring development activities to help that person blossom. Does that sound like a thing?
Dr. Kirch: It does. And I think, you know, that’s a nice analogy to precision medicine, personalized medicine. I don’t fear the labor intensiveness for a couple of reasons. One is, I think there will be a huge return on investment. You know, if people find themselves and find themselves doing things in which they can thrive, the organization will perform better, and the results will be better. And so it was a good investment.
But the other reason I don’t think it’ll be too labor intensive, is these are very bright people, very capable people. In some ways they don’t need a lot of hand-holding, what they need is permission to widen their view of the possibilities. So I believe that very well-intentioned, mid and senior level faculty spend way too much time unconsciously sending the message to their “mentees” that, “Your job is to become just like me.”
Dr. Skarupski: You’re so right.
Dr. Kirch: So when I talk with our various professional development meetings about lessons I’ve learned, one of my top 10 lessons is beware of people who want you to replicate them. Because they might try to fit you into a career that is less gratifying, doesn’t stir your passion. So some of what this more precise mentoring is left saying, “You need to go back and think about what you’re doing these days and tell me which days you enjoy most.”
When do you work hard but feel you’ve actually recharged your batteries versus been drained? I don’t know that that will take a lot more time. But this notion of let’s stop telling people that the best thing they can become is you, is like me.
Dr. Skarupski: The mini-me.
Dr. Kirch: Mini-me is a perfect term. And there’s a corollary of that that I also often sight, which is, let’s not be so elitist. There’s a remarkably high quality in U.S. academic medicine, some places are bigger than others, some places have more of a balance tilted toward research. But you can do great work and thrive at any one of U.S. medical schools and major teaching hospitals. So I think other people get caught up in, not only do you have to succeed in this specific way, but you need to do it at one of these five institutions, and that limits people’s opportunities.
Dr. Skarupski: You’re exactly right because it just puts that pressure. And I like what you’re saying about you don’t think it’s going to take a lot of time commitment. And it’s making me reflect on when I first started in faculty development by accident, like many people, I was at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, running a research mentoring program. And I’m a high E extrovert, so I love talking with people. And what I noticed that was just so obvious to me was when a faculty member would come to meet with me in this mentoring program, and I just do the usual getting to know you. Tell me about what you do. Tell me about your typical week or typical day.
And it literally is so obvious to me when they start talking about the thing they love. Their eyes, like, light up, their face become so expressive, they become animated. It’s almost like an electrical current. And then I can see this transformation happen. And I say to them, “Oh my gosh, I’m not sure you’re aware of the fact that you’re toying with these three options, but when you talked about number three, you looked so alive, I’ve never seen you look so excited. The speech part, you started talking more rapidly, your face lit up,” and they say, “Really?”
And that is to this day, six years now I’ve been at Hopkins. So it’s over 12 years of faculty development, and it never fails to just make me so joyful to sit across from a faculty member. And they’re so used to these annual review meetings where you’re just marching in, and you’re talking about RVUs, and what are you bringing to the institution, and trying to demonstrate your value. But when you’re just me as a mentor, or the faculty development person, just be quiet, and watch them, and hear them talk, you’re exactly right, it doesn’t take any longer to just see from them sharing and having the space, and the permission, as you say, to widen the angle, let’s widen this conversation, a new frame.
And they will often…they know as you said, they’re smart, they know what they’re good at or what they want to do. But they so rarely get the opportunity to articulate that. So I just love that idea. You’re so right, it doesn’t take any more time, just be quiet, just open the question, you know.
Dr. Kirch: Yeah. What saddens me is often when people start to reveal what they’re really passionate and excited about, sometimes they sound guilty as if they’re failing the expectations that have been built up around them. And I understand, you know, why the average senior faculty member believes they’re doing the most important kind of work in the best place to do it. But we do a disservice to those coming behind us if we try to arbitrarily impose that on them.
Dr. Skarupski: And especially when we think about diversity issues, and the younger generations…now I’m talking about age diversity, and all the other facets of diversity, you know, you’re so right. We talk about what we know so we just make all these assumptions. And I just find, if I just close my mouth for a minute, things arrive. You know, I took the resilience workshop at the AAMC and I learned…we did this values card deck, sorting the card deck. And it was just so…at first when they gave us that assignment, I thought, oh, “Geez, Louise, here we go,” and I was kind of annoyed, I know what I value.
But now I’ve adopted that in my leadership courses. And I tell people just, you know, humor me, we’re going to do this. And every person to the T as did I, you really…when you calm down and you think about this, that’s where that kind of mission misalignment. And as you talked about some people, it’s a big hidden secret that, you know, maybe I don’t really want to do this, maybe I’m really not…should be seeing patients. Maybe I am more suited for education, but I’ve never told anybody, it’s a big secret.
So that kind of self-knowledge and self-awareness and thinking about yourself, you know, we go on autopilot. And so many of our faculty members, I think, do the same thing. They’re just marching along because that’s what is expected of them. So providing space and opportunity for the big reveal, guess what, I like doing that before, and now I like doing this or I’m really curious about that is just part of our job, I think.
Dr. Kirch: And applauding, the rest of us applauding that as opposed to tisking about their failure to follow the prescribed path.
Dr. Skarupski: Yes, amen. So, you know, you’ve been involved in the Council of Deans for so, so long, I can’t help but be curious. You know, what…I’ve never sat in with these big groups. And I know we got a great dean, Paul Rothman. So I sit on our monthly advisory board meetings. And when you get a bunch of dean’s together, what do they think about in terms of academic affairs or faculty development? You know, can you kind of summarize for us or give us a little bit of a sneak peek inside those kind of hallowed walls? What are they talking about? What are they worried about? What do they wish we would do or stopped doing? Can you give us any kind of head up, or a little head start on trying to figure out how to work better with our deans?
Dr. Kirch: You know, some of it depends on whether the dean is a narrowly defined dean, or also heading the health system, and faculty practice, or even heading the other health profession schools. But it’s interesting to watch the transition from thinking like a department chair to thinking like a dean when people make that move. And that is the most common path into a dean-ship.
But the dean’s job is so complex, so multifaceted, that what I observed myself doing and what I observed them doing is kind of running assessment in which areas are things going well in this institution, and where are the potential risks, problems, stresses and so on. You know,
I don’t think it’s a negative statements that I don’t hear a great deal of discussions from the deans, about their faculty affairs programs, their promotion tenure programs, their…any broader academic affairs issues, because they have a high level of confidence in the people running them.
Because the results, you know, which probably the best test of these results is an accreditation visit, they typically don’t have problems there. And the deans tend to focus on the areas where they think there are problems that need to be fixed. As our clinical systems change, and it has become even more challenging to ensure good uniformity of high-quality clinical experiences for our students and residents that gets more attention.
You know, with all the financial pressures, just the overall health of the clinical enterprise, and especially the faculty practice gets a lot of their attention. So I often hear from the educational affairs, deans, the Faculty Affairs deans, a bit of a lament that they don’t feel that the dean is paying much attention to what they’re doing. And what I try to tell them is that that’s actually a vote of confidence. That if they felt that things were going awry, that there weren’t benefits to what was being done, that it wasn’t helping keep them as a strong, fully accredited institution, they would be paying attention to it. The fact that they pay less attention simply means they’re pretty pleased with what they hear and see.
And I think actually when you look at sort of the summative data that the LCME puts out about citations areas…you know, they obviously don’t publish the individual reports for each school. But periodically, they’ll summarize what are the most frequently cited standards that schools have failed to meet? It’s rare in my experience, to see issues related to faculty affairs and academic affairs, being cited in those standards. Which you know, speaks volumes about what the kind of work you and your colleagues in these roles are doing.
Dr. Skarupski: Phew, that’s a big relief. Now…
Dr. Kirch: Don’t interpret their relative silence or what appears to be less attention to a negative, it’s probably totally the opposite.
Dr. Skarupski: Now, I remember a couple of years ago, maybe almost three years ago now when our dean Rothman came back from the… I think, is the AAMA joy [SP] you know, burnout meeting, and he got on the stick real quick. And we now have a chief wellness officer that we have 50% effort of Dr. Lee Daugherty Biddison, as you know, Chief Wellness Officer. And I’m wondering if similar kinds of hot potato or hot buttons that they’re talking about now with the Council of Deans.
Do you see opportunity or areas that faculty development or academic affairs should be starting to pay attention to? So they’re not paying attention to us because we’re doing okay, thank you very much. But is there something we can proactively start thinking about that you kind of notice of you know, other than or maybe same as the burnout or definition of who are [inaudible 00:38:28] new, you know, lots more clinicians, we’re going to need. You know, what can you think about that we should maybe be proactive about?
Dr. Kirch: You know, I think we started paying attention to burnout and the unfortunate problems that are often associated with it, like depression, or substance abuse, or even suicide. We finally kind of have it on the front burner, and are studying it. And if you go to the National Academy of Medicine website, on clinician-well being, they’ve done a beautiful job of showing the array of all the factors that could contribute to burnout. So if I were a sitting dean today, what I would advise them to do is a, have their…whoever they’ve designated to take the lead on issues of burnout among the faculty, and among the students, have them look at that list. And see are there opportunities where we could improve our organizational culture that would help mitigate against burnout.
And you know, there’s a saying, I hear now that all burnout is local. So you know, why most of the people in one ICU are burned out may be very different from why they’re burned out in another ICU, or they’re not burned out at all in the other ICU. So you have to kind of drill down ultimately to the local level, which is what a lot of these chief well-being officers will be doing. You know, you can’t change what you don’t measure. And there are a lot of tools for assessing the state of burnout in faculty and learners. Some of them are pretty easy to use, others are more complex.
But I think every Faculty Affairs dean should be partnered with whoever is taking the point on burnout and well-being issues, to look for those faculty affairs, academic affairs, specific things that need attention. In one institution or even in one department, it may be the way scheduling is handled or short staffing is tolerated.
In another medical school, it might be a promotion and tenure track system that seems to leave no room for variation. I think in some places, it’ll be the availability of confidential, good counseling services. So I think as these chief wellness officer roles emerge, whatever they’re titled, there’s gotta be a natural alliance with the Faculty Affairs leader, and the Student Affairs leader, and the DIO for the residents. I think at least sitting down and, you know, doing some organizational scanning to see which pieces each of those key leaders could focus on.
Dr. Skarupski: So going forward, what are you planning on doing and you want to share with the family here, looking back at a career and looking forward, what advice do you have for us?
Dr. Kirch: Well, going forward, one thing I’m looking forward to is being in Chicago on July 11th, just to say hello to the GFA folks who are there. In terms of what I’m personally going to do, I’m going to take a mini-sabbatical from mid-July to mid-September, out in the mountains of Colorado. And all options are open. I got great advice from people, which is I’d get a lot of suggestions which I have. And I serve myself well to think about them and not make any early decisions. So I’ve entered yet another phase of my own professional development.
And I’m continuing to think like a mentee and seeking out people who I think have good thoughts who know me well and can help me find the answer to that question of what am I passionate about now for this next chapter of my life? What can I bring to the table? So we shall see where it leads, but I love academic medicine, healthcare, the future of the nation too much to go off somewhere and play golf.
Dr. Skarupski: You know, what you just articulated is a beautiful summary of our experiences with our transition faculty at Hopkins, and a lot of our peer institutions around the country. Let me back up a second, the GFA, the Group on Faculty Affairs, about three years ago, we started a project called the Late Career Faculty Survey. And pretty soon here, we’re going to have two publications coming out in academic medicine that summarizes the results of the survey. We surveyed full-time faculty members age 55 and older in a representative sample of academic institutions, so 14 across the country.
Then we also surveyed all the academic affairs, deans at every medical institution, asking them about their retirement offerings for late-career faculty, programming, what kind of services we have. And we came out with, you know, really telling information which, to date, we’ve had nothing published about late-career faculty. But what you said is exactly what we found at Hopkins when we did this. We started an academy, the Academy for Retired Faculty and School of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health. And as part of that academy grand opening, just last summer, we hosted a four-part series called The Transition Next Chapter series, and helping late-career faculty members, say, you know, 55 and older, start thinking about it. And what you said is what everybody’s articulated.
For those of us in academic medicine, our master status has been, “I’m an academician.” So the idea of just stopping is no longer part of retirement, even the word itself, no one wants to think about retiring or stopping. And almost to a person, everyone wants to maintain a foothold in mentoring faculty, or education, helping write papers, coaching, helping with education, or clinical observation, anything that they want to keep doing the things they love to help younger faculty.
So what you said about I’m talking to people, I’m thinking about it, I don’t want to just stop, that is exactly where so many of our faculty members are at the same place. And that’s, I guess, another little, maybe a PSA for all our friends out there listening on the podcast that late-career faculty is nothing but growing. And, you know, we’re an aging population, and we’re doing the same thing in academic medicine. So there’s a whole area open for those of us who are reaching, you know, later stages of our career.
Dr. Kirch: There’s a tremendous reservoir of intellectual capital there, people with great values and great wisdom and experience.
Dr. Skarupski: Well, Dr. Kirch, do you have any parting words for us as we close this segment of the “Faculty Factory Podcast?”
Dr. Kirch: Just that I am deeply, deeply appreciative of everything, the GFA leadership, all those involved in academic affairs, faculty affairs in any capacity in our institutions have done. I mean, we are so much stronger for all the work that’s gone into the development of these programs, we’ve come a long way in less than a generation.