A new model for recognizing and rewarding the educational accomplishments of surgery faculty

Faculty members' educational endeavors have generally not received adequate recognition. The Association for Surgical Education in 1993 established a task force to determine the magnitude of this problem and to crate a model to address the challenges and opportunities identified. To obtain baseline information, the task force reviewed information from national sources and the literature on recognizing and rewarding faculty members for educational accomplishments. The group also developed and mailed to surgery department s at all U.S. and Canadian medical schools a questionnaire asking about the educational endeavors of the surgery faculty and their recognition for suc h activities. The response rate after two mailings was only 56%, but the re sponses reaffirmed the inadequacy of systems for rewarding and recognizing surgeon - teachers and surgeon -educators, and confirmed that the distincti on between the roles of teacher and educator was rarely made. The task forc e created a four-tier hierarchial model based on the designations teacher, master teacher, educator, and master educator as a framework to offer appro priate recognition and rewards to the faculty, and endorsed a broad definit ion of educational scholarship. Criteria for various levels of achievement, ways to demonstrate and document educational contributions, appropriate su pport and recognition,and suggested faculty ranks were defined for these le vels. The task force recommended that each surgery department have within i ts faulty ranks a cadre of trained teachers, a few master teachers,and at l ast one educator. Departments with a major commitment to eduction should co nsider supporting a master educator to serve as a resource not only for the department but also for the department's medical school and other medical schools. Although this model was created for surgery departments, it is gen eralizable to other disciplines.