For Release: January 28, 2014
Contact: Derik Hertel (603) 650-1211 Derik.Hertel@Dartmouth.EDU
Catherine Pipas Named a National Faculty Mentor with the Association of American Medical Colleges' Leadership Program
Hanover, NH—Catherine Pipas, MD, director of the leadership component of the new curriculum at Geisel and a professor of community and family medicine, has been appointed a Faculty Member of the Association of American Medical Colleges' Leadership Education and Development Program (LEAD). In her new role, Pipas will be mentoring and advising medical school faculty who are training as LEAD faculty fellows.
LEAD provides leadership training for medical school faculty who are in entry-level and mid-level leadership positions in academic medicine. Training for LEAD fellows is organized through the AAMC's regional structure which makes it easier for trainees to access leadership opportunities. After a few months of training, Pipas will work with other LEAD faculty and a New England regional director to implement and manage the LEAD curriculum across the New England region. Pipas will also advise two LEAD fellows on leadership projects in their own organizations.
Pipas is very excited to be selected as a LEAD Faculty Member. "I'm thrilled to be able to both share what we have developed here [at Geisel]—because we're still putting together our four-year long curriculum of leadership and I'll be directing that course—but also to gain insight into what some other schools have done and what other leaders in education are training their faculty and future faculty as well," she says.
Pipas has many years of leadership experience at Dartmouth and nationally. She is chair of Dartmouth's Curriculum Redesign Work Group on Leadership and is director of the Comprehensive Longitudinal Leadership Course in Geisel's new upcoming curriculum. She served for eight years as director of Geisel's Family Medicine Clerkship which consistently has been highly rated by students. Nationally, she serves on the Leaders of Change Curriculum Development Committee of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), and is the STFM representative for the AAMC Council of Faculty and Academic Societies. Pipas also helped found a program similar to LEAD—a predoctoral director's institute with STFM where she mentored clerkship directors in family medicine.
The LEAD program trains faculty fellows to develop their own leadership style and disseminate what they've learned to their students, residents, and faculty colleagues. LEAD's curriculum covers not just knowledge and skills of leadership, says Pipas, but has a "heavy emphasis on experiential learning and application which is really what I am most interested in, having people take what they've learned and being able to apply it in their own leadership situation," she says. LEAD fellows work with their faculty mentor and a local coach on personal leadership, helping colleagues develop as leaders, and develop an organization.
To find out how to apply to be a LEAD faculty fellow, and read testimonials from past fellows, see https://www.aamc.org/members/gea/lead/.
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