A SGEA Special Interest Group (SGEA-SIG) is a community with an interest in advancing a specific area within the SGEA where members communicate, collaborate and meet to promote research, and effect or produce solutions within their area. SGEA-SIGs are self-perpetuating groups in which the membership is responsible for ensuring the ongoing activities of the group. Any SGEA member can join an SGEA-SIG and can be a member of more than one SIG. SGEA-SIGs elect their own officers. Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Membership Coordinator (and others as needed) and set their own agendas.
SIG Convener Responsibilities (PDF)
The SGEA Steering Committee will review the status of each SIG every 3 years for its membership and activity.
Anyone interested in forming an SGEA-SIG, should first consider current SIGs and overlapping interests. If the new SIG has unique goals, draft a proposal (identifying an interim Chair and Membership Coordinator for the SIG, as well as giving a short background, goal, mission statement, operational guidelines and proposed activities for the SIG) and send it along with a list of interested SGEA members to the Chairperson of the SGEA Steering Committee for approval by that committee. The membership list can be a separate file or an addendum within the proposal. While this list may contain some non-SGEA members, the bulk of the membership and the leadership for the SIG should be SGEA members.
Current SIGs
Coordinators & Administrators in Medical Education (CAIME)
The CAIME-SIG will work to implement new and innovative ideas that enhance the effectiveness of medical education. Its mission is to unite all administrators and coordinators in undergraduate medical education and graduate medical education across disciplines and universities across the southern region to collaborate on research, create alliances, implement new and innovative ideas that enhance our roles as administrators and coordinators, and develop educational programs that promote opportunities for professional development and leadership.
For more information about the CAIME-SIG, please contact Natalie Dwarika.
Continuous Quality Improvement in Medical Education (CQI)
The goal of the CQI SIG is to employ and expand the collective wisdom of SGEA members in regard to using CQI for educational improvement. In addition to collaboratively exploring scholarly activities, members of the SIG will share experiences, including utilizing CQI to improve medical education programs and examining best practices for meeting LCME Element 1.1.
For more information about the CQI-SIG, please contact Teresa Isbell or Vicki Parck.
Directors of Clinical Skills Courses (DOCS)
There has been an increased focus on the teaching and assessment of clinical skills over the past two decades as medicine has become increasingly patient-centric. Each medical school devotes a portion of its curriculum to teaching basic interviewing, physical examination, and clinical reasoning skills, often during the preclinical years. The mission of the DOCS-SIG is to establish a community of faculty and administrative leaders involved in clinical skills education that provides support, shares best practices, fosters collaboration and conducts educational research.
For more information about the DOCS-SIG, please contact Analia Castiglioni.
Evidence-Based Teaching (EBT)
The mission of the Evidence-Based Teaching SIG (EBT-SIG) is to help establish medical educator and medical librarian partnerships for teaching and learning. This community will strive to identify and share effective models of collaboration between health science librarians and medical educators to support evidence-based teaching and learning in medical curricula. It will facilitate ongoing communication among librarians and medical educators from medical and health sciences schools in Southern Region.
For more information about the EBT-SIG, please contact Jasna Vuk or Joe Blumer.
Faculty Development in Medical Education (FDME)
The mission of the FDME-SIG is to establish a learning and collaborative community of those engaged in the development of faculty to best serve in their teaching, research and leadership roles. This community will address the unique challenges across the continuum of medical education and support the implementation of best practices and research in faculty development.
For more information about the FD-SIG, please contact Amy Hall, Stacey Wahl, Colleen Kalynych, or Kimberly McElveen.
Humanities in Medicine (HiM)
The mission of the Humanities in Medicine Special Interest Group (HimSIG) is to create a community for practitioners, researchers, and educators to collaborate and promote curricular and co-curricular humanities content in medical education. This vision of this SIG is for each institution of undergraduate medical education (UME) to embed documented humanities content within the formal curriculum as well as humanities-related activities within the informal co-curriculum. To this end, HumSIG meets monthly to engage in lively discussion on hot topics, articles of interest, and promote collaboration on projects to promote humanities content.
For more information about the HUM-SIG, please contact Mary Horton.
Innovation and Leadership in Medical Education (ILME)
The mission of the ILME-SIG is to establish a community for the administrators, researchers and educators involved in or those who are interested in collaborating and supporting the work of leadership and innovative programs on their campuses. This community will address unique academic challenges across medical education and support the implementation of best practices and research within the AAMC. Its vision is the development of fully integrated, longitudinal opportunities for both students and faculty in leadership development at medical school and medical academic centers.
For more information about the ILME-SIG, please contact Naunihal Zaveri and Angela Yarnell.
Interprofessional Education (IPE)
Interprofessional Education (IPE) is a topic that is receiving a great deal of attention due to the importance of team based collaborative care and the implementation of accreditation standards across disciplines. The mission of the IPE-SIG is to create a community of scholars who specialize or have an interest in interprofessional education, share best practices, and facilitate the successful implementation of team based collaborative care in a variety of settings.
IPE SIG offers quarterly webinars entitled, “Conversations in IPE.” The first webinar features The University of Texas at Austin Health Interprofessional Practice and Education Steering Committee as its members discuss starting an IPE program. Access here.
For more information about the IPE-SIG, please contact Kelly Lockeman or John Luk.
Program Evaluation (PE)
The mission of the Program Evaluation SIG (PE-SIG) is to establish a community for administrators, researchers and educators whose professional focus is curriculum and program evaluation within medical schools and academic medical centers. This community will address the challenges and opportunities facing program evaluators across the spectrum of medical education, and support the implementation of best practices in program evaluation within the SGEA and the AAMC.
For more information about the PE-SIG, please contact Yuanyuan Zhou, Charlotte Whitehead, or Ashley Saucier.
Pathway, Pipeline, and Bridge Programs (PPB)
An increasing number of student affairs administrators, admissions officers, and medical educators are working together to develop premedical programs that go beyond the standard partnership of required premedical coursework and student advising. These programs—sometimes called “pathways,” “pipelines,” “bridges,” or “early assurance” programs—offer courses, experiential learning opportunities, and additional advising to select groups of premedical students with the goals of both recruiting and preparing promising students for medical school. The mission of the PPB-SIG is to provide a forum for conducting a baseline census of the programs currently in existence, developing consensus documents about the definition and mission of these programs, and laying the groundwork for sharing best practices and conducting research. These activities may inspire improvements in PPB program development, ultimately benefitting students and the medical profession as whole.
For more information about the PPB-SIG, please contact Kimberly Pilkinton and Barbra Roller.
Professionalism and Professional Health and Wellness (PPHW)
Academic medical school faculty members experience stress, anxiety, depression and burnout at rates comparable to or above the general population and the rates of burnout are increasing. Faculty members are prone to the same life changing events and health risks as the general population and many receive little to no training in identifying or managing stress and burnout. Medical students and residents also experience burnout. The mission of the PPHW-SIG is to establish a community for academic faculty members. This community will disseminate information, address educational needs, and help fill the gap in education/training around the topic of professional health and wellness as it relates to self-care, burnout, and professional behaviors in both our work and home relationships.
For more information about the PPHW-SIG, please contact Nital Appelbaum or Heidi von Harscher.
Portfolio, Research, Implementation and Evaluation (PRIME)
The mission of the PRIME-SIG is to establish a community of practice for the administrators, researchers and educators of academic centers or those who are interested in collaborative research, developing best practice guidelines and in scholarly work related to Portfolios. This community will address unique academic challenges related to portfolios and support the implementation of best practices and research within the AAMC.
PRIME-SIG has received two grants in the past four years. Currently, the members are working closely on the funded “Uncovering the Impact of Feedback on Medical Student Professional Identity Format” project.
For more information about the PRIME-SIG, please contact: Litao Wang, Kendra Papson Parekh, Joshua Costin, or Ashley Saucier.
Student Academic Enhancement (SAE)
The mission of the SAE-SIG is to establish a community for the administrators, researchers, and educators of academic support centers or those who are interested collaborating and supporting the work of academic support centers on their own campuses. This community will address the unique academic challenges across medical education and support the implementation of best practices and research in educational support centers within the AAMC.
To join the SGEA Student Academic Enhancement (SAE) listserv please visit the listserv website and complete the section “Subscribing to SAE.”
For more information about the SAE-SIG, please contact Angie Hairrell or Chris Diem.
Science Education in Integrated Curricula (SEIC)
Many medical curricula are undergoing revision to integrate basic science knowledge with clinical decision-making skills. The mission of the SEIC-SIG is to establish a forum of communication in which basic science faculty and others can share ideas about how to best accomplish this common goal. Proposed activities include organizing a dedicated oral presentation session and workshop at the annual SGEA meeting that will allow faculty to share experiences with alternative teaching pedagogies, as well as ideas on how to organize, prioritize, and integrate the learning of science knowledge in an integrated curriculum.
Our current activities revolve around 3 projects. The first includes a survey to schools who have adopted an integrated curriculum to determine how much concern there is among faculty (or students) about tracking performance within traditional disciplines? How such information is tracked. And a plan to extract information about the range of “integrated” curricula and follow up correlation with USMLE Step 1 results. The second project focuses on innovation in integrated, active, and self-directed learning that emphasize basic science. We hope to develop a process for sharing innovative teaching materials/activities/ideas that foster the shift from discipline-based to integrated learning. Our long-term project aims to develop a core basic science curriculum that can be shared across medical schools (think EPAs for basic science). This would consist of common core objectives and shared cases.
For more information about the SEIC-SIG, please contact Diane Chico or Joe Blumer.
Staff Professionals Across the Continuum of Education (SPACE)
The mission of the Staff Professionals Across the Continuum of Education (SPACE) in Medical Education special interest group is to create a space for staff professionals, as coordinators, specialists, educators, managers, and academic trainers across the continuum of medical education to share best practices, research, resources, and expertise with peers within and across regions. The group will serve as an area for staff members to share best practices, support each other through professional development, and serve the SGEA community through development of resources and implementation of a staff track for the annual meetings.
Any staff members interested in joining SPACE may reach out to Tyrese (Hinkins) Jones.
Students and Residents Interested in Academia (SRIA)
Developing educators can now form a unique partnership across institutions. The mission of the SRIA-SIG is to establish a community of students and residents interested in pursuing careers in academia that collaborates across institutions and supports the participation of students and residents in the SGEA. This community will address the challenges of students and residents involved in the study of medical education and support the implementation of best practices and research in education within the AAMC.
For more information about the SRIA-SIG, please contact Anna Lama.