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Lois Colburn with longtime friend Rubens Pamies, M.D. |
Just ask anyone who knows her.
“She has a tremendous personality,” said Rubens Pamies, M.D., vice chancellor of academic affairs at UNMC. “People are drawn to her.”
Dr. Pamies first met Colburn in 1990 when he was selected as one of 25 candidates to participate in a two-year faculty development fellowship through the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington, D.C.
“Mother Lois,” as Dr. Pamies and the other fellows liked to call her, meticulously took care of the day-to-day details of the fellowship she created. She also made a point to interact with each fellow.
“She was the matriarch of the group,” said Dr. Pamies, “nagging us to get things done and helping us professionally.”
It is that attention to detail and her years of experience working with the AAMC that make Colburn the best person to direct the Center for Continuing Education.
“Lois has a national presence and is well-known throughout the country from her previous role at the AAMC,” said Dr. Pamies. “She has a breadth of experience of interacting with leaders in Washington, D.C., and in private industry. Because of her background she will be able to help UNMC move forward toward becoming a world-class institution.”
Colburn has already demonstrated her leadership abilities by helping plan a conference for Byers W. Shaw Jr., M.D., chairman of the department of surgery at UNMC.
“Lois Colburn brings a truly spectacular record of achievement to our campus,” Dr. Shaw said. “Her work at the AAMC has resulted in extensive contacts throughout the U.S. in academic and non-academic institutions. I marvel at her enthusiasm and am very impressed by her knack for finding information, contacting people, twisting arms and generally getting the job done.”
As the assistant vice president in the Division of Community and Minority Programs at the AAMC, Colburn worked tenaciously at increasing awareness of the need for more minorities in the medical field.
She has published numerous papers on the topic and most recently served as deputy director for the national program office of the Health Professions Partnership Initiative (HPPI), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Through HPPI, academic medical centers are encouraged to form partnerships with undergraduate institutions and local high schools and middle schools to improve the quality of science and math education for minority students.
Although Colburn has spent much of her career working on increasing diversity in all areas of the health field, she also has been heavily involved in program development and continuing medical education.
“I look forward to this new challenge of getting to know the academic units at UNMC and building a premier program,” she said.
Colburn’s biggest challenge, she said, will be to provide leadership to a center that, for the past year, has not had a formal director. Another challenge facing Colburn, Dr. Pamies said, is how to deliver the most up-to-date continuing medical education when it is constantly changing.
“Colburn understands the importance of providing the best continuing medical education health professionals need for recertification,” he said.
Colburn earned a bachelor of elected studies in 1977 from the University of Minnesota, where she also completed her doctoral coursework in sociology in 1982 and coursework in health services research and administration in 1988.
The move from Bethesda to Omaha has been an easy one, in part because “the people at the medical center are very friendly, helpful and supportive,” she said.
Colburn’s husband Jim, a former photo editor of Time magazine’s Washington bureau, is now photo editor at the Lincoln Journal Star.
In her spare time, Colburn enjoys cooking and the opera. She and her husband, who enjoys rock and roll concerts, also plan to take advantage of the vast expanse of Nebraska roads and go sightseeing on their BMW motorcycle.