Faculty Development

Providing faculty development to a large, dispersed, and diverse population of community-based faculty is challenging. Medical schools may consider recruiting and retaining community-based faculty by employing innovative faculty development delivery methods. A recent email survey amongst members of the Community Faculty Consortium revealed that a number of regional campuses across North America similar to WRC and NRC are beginning to develop new programs tailored to the needs of community faculty members. However, very few institutions have an established program designated for this purpose. 

In the Waterloo and Niagara Regions, there are approximately 1000 faculty members affiliated with McMaster University. The vast majority of them are part time, clinical faculty members who are invested in educational activities voluntarily. These faculty members may not prioritize academic promotion so the usual university-based incentives may not be as effective. 

Nonetheless, these faculty members pull the heavy weight of UG and PG education at the campuses. Small group sessions are locally moderated. Aside from some large group lectures, all of the core clerkship curriculum and a large number of core residency curriculum are delivered locally. While contributing greatly to the academic mission for McMaster in the regions, faculty members presently have unmet needs for faculty development.

Although the Program for Faculty Development at FHS does offer a great variety of faculty development resources, regional faculty members have not taken full advantage of them. At the regional campuses, the faculty development team has not been consistently successful in engaging faculty members. When asked, faculty members invariably cite issues like time constraints and distance to Hamilton or to the regional campus as insurmountable difficulties. However, based on informal surveys, there is a high level of expressed interest in acquiring skills to become better teachers.

We have an opportunity here to fulfill these unmet needs.

In partnership with the Program for Faculty Development at FHS McMaster, we propose the creation of a program that is tailored to a subset of regional faculty members who have an unmet need in accessing faculty development resources. These resources must be adapted to their practice reality.

We propose the creation of a regional campus version of the McMaster Basic Educational Skills Teachers (BEST) certificate program. Similarly to BEST, the McMaster Regional Campus Faculty Teaching Certificate (RCFTC) requires the candidate to participate in a total of 35 hours of combined faculty development and teaching activities. With the context of regional medical education in mind, the required hours and activities would be relevant and accessible to regional faculty members.

The requirements for successful completion of the RCFTC are:

 i. Successful completion of faculty development courses/workshops (online or in person) and corresponding certificates of completion documentation (eg. total of 25 hours minimum)

• PFD workshops (accredited with academic points and entered into MacFads by PFD)
• locally WRC or NRC developed workshops (PFD will review and grant academic points, points will be entered into MacFads by local administrator)

Other relevant and previously approved faculty development workshops/courses (eg. online modules, educational conferences)

ii: Documented teaching {UGME or PGME or other learners) with relevant evaluations (eg. total of 1O hours minimum)

iii. Teaching Portfolio: the above must be fully completed and documented in a "teaching portfolio" to be submitted and reviewed

A comprehensive document outlining the purpose and requirement  for the program,  along with the administrative contact for the program, will be posted on the Regional Campus Faculty Development webpage. Faculty members are invited to contact the Faculty Development Coordinator (FDC) for registration. The program administrative team will maintain a record of communications, and enter the MacFACTS Star 0/ academic points of any locally developed Faculty Development workshops that have been approved by PFD for academic points. The PFD will continue to enter participant academic points for their own workshops, delivered in Hamilton, regional campuses, or online. Faculty members may record workshop attendance and teaching activities using an online tracking form (similar to the one developed by the PFD), which will be posted on the Regional Campus Faculty Development webpage.

Those who have completed the requirement may submit their records to the FDC at the regional campus for review. The FDC will forward the confirmation of completion  of the requirements  to the Assistant Dean for PFD along with faculty  details.  A certificate of  completion  will be issued by McMaster PFD, with combined signature of the FDC as well as Regional Assistant Dean and Assistant Dean PFD.

Certified faculty members will be recognized in regional faculty newsletters as well as the annual regional campus awards ceremony. At the Waterloo Regional Campus, this would be the annual winter Gala. At the Niagara Regional Campus, this would be the annual Faculty Development Retreat. In addition, the accomplishment of these faculty members will be recognized at the Annual Day in Faculty Development at McMaster University, along with certificants in the Basic Educational Skills Teachers category.

McMaster University, like other institutions across North America, are challenged to deliver faculty development to community-based faculty who practice at varying distances from the university, face increasing clinical productivity demands, and demonstrate diverse training needs. However, despite these constraints, medical schools must ensure the quality of training by providing ongoing faculty development for community-based teachers.

We anticipate that initially, a small cohort (potentially 1 or 2 individuals) will complete all the requirements in the first year of the program. Over time, we hope a small group of individuals will reach critical mass to influence their respective communities of clinical practice as role models in combining clinical and educational achievements. We envisage that this certificate program could be the first step towards a cultural shift towards a more engaged and well-developed faculty group in the regional campuses of McMaster University. As a result, we hope McMaster University will continue to lead in faculty development in the distributive setting nationally and internationally, and share this experience with other universities with a similar medical education model.