Vision

Welcome from the Director:

The Office for Teaching and Learning in Medicine was created in 2005 through the vision of Steven Gabbe, Dean of the School of Medicine, and Bonnie Miller, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, as well as the vision of many others from the Vanderbilt School of Medicine community. I am both honored and humbled to be the first director of the Office. I look forward to working with my colleagues who share a common interest in advancing the best practices of medical education. The intellectual and collaborative environment of Vanderbilt will help ensure our productive and meaningful service to the School of Medicine. — John Shatzer, Ph.D.

Vision:

The Office for Teaching and Learning in Medicine will be a vibrant, creative and supportive educational entity within the School of Medicine. Members of the Office will collaborate to produce nationally recognized curricula, assessments and outcome benchmarks in medical education. The Office will assume a national and international prominence in research that informs our educational practice and supports the sciences of learning and measurement. Simulation training and assessment will be a featured aspect of our work. It will also establish a close link to the educational community at large, as well as the Peabody School of Education at Vanderbilt. This link will become a conduit for creating new and varied perspectives for medical education. The link will produce a nationally recognized training ground for new medical educators and junior medical faculty whose professional pathways embrace educational scholarship.

Mission:

The core mission of the Office for Teaching and Learning in Medicine is to support the educational program of the School. In so doing, the Office will provide educational resources and expertise, professional development opportunities and research agendas that inform best educational practices. That is, it will provide service, teaching and scholarship to support its mission.

• The first important mission is to provide service in support of the teaching faculty and the educational programs.
  
  
• A second mission is to support faculty in their professional development in educational scholarship. This is accomplished by skill development in teaching and educational leadership as well as the tools of educational research.
  
  
• A third mission, a commitment to scholarship, underpins the first two. The first level of research should inform the questions that arise in the course of the educational practice. The second level addresses translational research, that is, the fundamental questions of teaching and learning as applied to medicine.