Opportunity Details

Department of Surgery

Clinician

Associate Professor/Full Professor

Vice Chair of Education

The Vice Chair of Education reports directly to the John Olson, MD, Chair of Surgery and will have significant leadership responsibility to oversee all education programs and carry out the education mission of the department.  The Vice Chair of Education will build and support a strong educational leadership pipeline, managing and collaborating with residency program directors associate program directors, fellowship directors, and clerkship directors.  The Vice Chair of Education will devote 20-40% professional effort to the role with administrative support; the balance of effort will be directed to clinical care of patients and/or research as appropriate.

The Department of Surgery has been a leader nationally in several transformative innovative areas being very early participants in developing alternative training paradigms for clinical training, including being the first department in the nation to offer Early Specialization Programs in both cardiothoracic and vascular surgery.  The department served as principal site for a multi-institutional prospective analysis of the American Board of Surgery’s Flexibility in Training initiative. To this day, all senior residents in the General Surgery program have “flex track” rotation schedules. Additionally, in 2022, the Plastic Surgery program became the first in the nation to offer an enfolded Hand Surgery fellowship, within the Plastic Surgery core program. Further, a number of our faculty and residents have authored modules for and contributed leadership to the formation of SCORE (Surgical Council on Resident Education), the most widely used on-line curriculum for training in General Surgery and its fellowships. Additionally, the department established a surgical simulation program more than 20 years ago, one of the first in the nation. 

The leadership infrastructure for education in the department is unique, with a dedicated, full-time administrative staff that manage all aspects of education, from medical student rotations through fellowships. Additionally, the department’s Education Committee, led by the Vice Chair of Education, helps to oversee all aspects of education in the department, working across divisions and sections to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, optimal mentoring programs for trainees, successful intern and fellow recruitment and interview events and optimization of faculty involvement in resident and student education. The department has 185 full-time faculty members and numerous adjunct faculty with academic appointments. There are 59 faculty at the level of Professor and 30 Endowed Professorships.

The Vice Chair of Education will be a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at the rank of Associate Professor or above; experience should include a current or past position as a Program Director (Residency or Fellowship) or the Director of Medical Student Education. The Vice Chair must demonstrate skilled leadership, a strong commitment to education, excellent verbal and written communication skills, high degree of emotional intelligence, and encouragement of quality and process improvement. The Vice Chair must be able to function at a high managerial level in a complex health care organization and is expected to serve as a role model for others within the department through leading by example. 

Mark Prosperi

prosperim@wustl.edu

3149352844

10/19/2022

11/29/2023

An Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action Employer

Washington University in St. Louis is committed to the principles and practices of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action. It is the university’s policy to recruit, hire, train, and promote persons in all job titles without regard to race, color, age, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, veteran status, disability, or genetic information. Washington University seeks an exceptionally qualified and diverse faculty; women, minorities, protected veterans and candidates with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

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