Changes enhance Spotlight on Scholarship event

The Interprofessional Academy of Educators (IAE) Spotlight on Scholarship event picked up the pace a little in its second year.

Held in May, the Spotlight on Scholarship is designed as a day of conversation, collaboration and recognition of innovative educational research and scholarship.

The event included an educational showcase and celebrated the many educational innovations of UNMC colleagues. Educational research was presented using an oral presentation format by UNMC and University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) health humanities educators.

The new format, in which nine presenters got eight minutes each to present their data and two minutes to take questions from attendees, proved popular with organizers and attendees, said Kim Michael, associate professor of medical imaging and therapeutic sciences, and associate director of the IAE.

See the research projects here.

“It went really well,” she said. “There were a lot of good, innovative presentations offered, and the event let people get their research out there.”

“The presentations showed that the IAE is spurring interprofessional scholarly collaboration around education not only within UNMC colleges, but also with UNO,” said Dele Davies, M.D., senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. “The strong attention to assessment in all the projects is a harbinger of opportunities for ongoing innovation within our educational programs.”

The new presentation format was adapted from a national meeting Michael attended.

“When you do a poster presentation, not everybody gets to talk to every poster presenter,” Michael said. “With these presentations, everyone gets to share their ideas.

“We also were happy with the diversity of presentations from the different colleges and campuses, and we enjoyed the chance to learn about the amazing projects that we have going on here at UNMC.”

“We congratulate the presenters on their novel and exciting approaches to teaching and appreciate their contributions to enhance the future of health care education,” said IAE Director Brian Boerner, M.D.

The Interprofessional Academy of Educators mission is “to help connect educators and also to showcase the amazing things we’re doing at UNMC,” Michael said. “The Spotlight on Scholarship is a way to do both — we got to promote scholarly activity and collaboration, and hopefully we’re able to connect faculty members who, going forward, will develop even more new ideas.”

Applications to be part of the academy are now open. Interested faculty and staff can visit the website or email the academy for information.