Moves and Milestones

Bert Simon, DHSc, PA-C, a long-time PA educator and since 1996 director of the PAEA Annual Report, moved recently into a position as assistant dean for evaluation and quality innovation at A.T. Still University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, Mesa, Arizona. His responsibilities include designing evaluation systems for faculty and students and for the medical school itself. The transition has been fairly smooth, Simon said, in part because the medical school uses many of the methods that PA programs have long used to deliver curriculum. The school uses a “clinical presentation model,” developed at the University of Calgary.

Simon led the Department of Physician Assistant Sciences of the Saint Francis University PA Program in Loretto, Pennsylvania, between 1982 and 2005, as program director and then as department chair. In February 2005 he became chair of the Department of Physician Assistant Studies at the Arizona School of Health Sciences.

J. Glenn Forister, MPAS, PA-C, assistant professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, received the Presidential Award for Distinguished Teaching, which goes to faculty who have made a significant contribution to the education and development of future health care professionals. Only four or five awards of this kind are presented each year, and Forister is the first PA faculty to be honored.  He was nominated by students and his nomination underwent a vigorous peer review process.

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PAEA Networker's Moves and Milestones is designed to help keep members informed about their colleagues’ activities. The column features information on faculty moves and promotions and on significant changes and achievements at member programs. Examples are faculty moving to new positions within the program or elsewhere, grants received, articles or books published, a new track or satellite campus established. We also welcome curricular innovations that may not have the research basis for peer-reviewed publication but that would be of anecdotal interest to PA faculty.

If you have news you would like to share, please send it to Eileen Evans, PAEA Networker managing editor, at eevans@PAEAonline.org; (703) 548-5538, ext. 307. News must be received by the 20th of the month for inclusion in the following month’s issue.