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November 2007 |  |
PAEA Presents Annual Faculty Awards and Funds Grant ProposalsOne of the traditional highlights of the Education Forum is the presentation of the PAEA faculty awards. Six awards were presented at the 2007 meeting, as well as six research grants. Photos from the Awards Luncheon are available here. First Presidential Award Presented to Jesse EdwardsPresident Anita Glicken presented the Association’s new Presidential Award to Jesse Edwards, MS, faculty member at the University of Nebraska PA Program. This is the first time this award has been made, and Glicken explained that it represented a “kind of lifetime achievement award.” Edwards received this honor for his nearly 40 years of devotion to PA education. He is particularly identified with the development of the profession in the military and in the state of Nebraska. He was a founder of the University of Nebraska PA Program in 1971 and was instrumental in establishing the affiliation between the joint Air Force/Navy PA program and the university, which awarded the degree to the military’s graduates. He served in the U.S. Air Force for more than 20 years, retiring in 1967 as a major. In 2000 the Air Force named its annual award for junior PA officers after him. Edwards was an early advocate of the international development of the profession. He was both vice president and president of the Association and established the liaison relationship between PAEA and the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions, which continues to have an important role with PAEA. He created and maintained the first national test item bank for PA programs, referred to as “Mr. Tib.” The New Faculty Award for Professional Excellence Karen Graham, MPAS, PA-C, academic coordinator at the University of Toledo PA Program in Ohio, was the recipient of this award that recognizes a program faculty or staff member who has been employed for three years or less at the time of nomination. Graham has quickly become known as a superb teacher. In 2006, she received the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence. She has also taken on leadership roles in her department and at the college, local, and state levels. She recently convened and chaired a 45-hour CME event for local PAs and graduates who needed additional pharmacology hours to obtain their prescribing certificates under the new Ohio law. During her first year with the PA program, Graham helped to develop the Center for Neurological Disorders Interdisciplinary Team Clinic at the University Medical Center. She practices as a member of a team that includes a neurologist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, a social worker, a speech language disorder therapist, and a neuropsychologist. The clinic is considered the model for future practice at the university’s academic health center. In her acceptance speech, Graham acknowledged her father, Keith Graham, the "first generation" PA educator in her family, who was with her in Tucson. Graham Sr. is the academic coordinator at the University of St. Francis PA Program in Indiana. Rising Star Award This award went to Alison Essary, MHPE, PA-C, academic coordinator at Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona. Nominees for this award must have been employed at least half-time in a member program for at least three, but no more than seven, years. Essary coordinates and teaches more than 36 credit hours in the master’s curriculum. Students acknowledge her commitment to their education as someone who helps them if they are struggling or challenges them to take their work to the next level. In May 2006, Essary was named Teacher of the Year for the PA program. Outside of teaching, her achievements have been remarkable. She has had three funded grants, including a recent NCCPA award for a grant designed to incorporate the competencies of the profession into PA education, and has presented on numerous topics at state PA meetings and at PAEA conferences. She is a peer reviewer for the Journal of Allied Health, the Journal of Physician Assistant Education, and for Jones and Bartlett Publishers. She is a member of the NCCPA’s Test Materials Development Committee and was recently selected to serve on the AAPA Clinical and Scientific Affairs Council. In 2005 she joined the PAEA Faculty Development Institute Advisory Committee. The Master Faculty Award Through the Master Faculty Award, PAEA honors faculty who inspire, stimulate, and challenge their students and colleagues through outstanding contributions to PA education and the profession. Matt Dane Baker, DHSc, PA-C, was selected to receive this award for 2007. In 1994, Baker was the founding director for the PA program at Philadelphia University, where he is now a professor and dean of the School of Science and Health. His clinical work as a PA encompasses more than 22 years in geriatrics, cardiac rehabilitation, family medicine, otorhinolaryngology/head and neck surgery, psychiatry, and occupational medicine. Baker has more than 20 years of military service and currently serves part time as a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard. He has gained additional training in the areas of emergency medical services operations and planning for weapons of mass destruction with several defense agencies and is a member of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States. Baker has taught extensively in PAEA’s faculty development seminars, including Basic Faculty Skills, Enhanced Faculty Skills, and the Leadership Training program. He consistently receives the highest marks for his presentations. He has published in Clinical Reviews and Clinical Advisor and has a contributed a number of book chapters to Physician Assistant Review. He is PI for a $918,000 federal award from NASA for the Scientific Reasoning Inquiry Based Education Initiative. His students say that Baker is most notable for his innovative teaching style. A letter of support from the president of the 2008 class told how Baker transformed the classroom to explain ejection fraction and aortic stenosis: the door became the aortic valve; the hallway was the systemic circulation; the classroom represented the left ventricle; and each of the students, red blood cells. Research Achievement Award P. Eugene Jones, PhD, PA-C, chair of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Department of PA Studies, was this year’s recipient of the PAEA Research Achievement Award. Jones was recognized for his distinguished record of scholarly contributions to PA education over many years. Jones has authored more than 50 publications in prestigious journals both within and outside the PA profession, including papers in Academic Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. His work spans educational and faculty issues, quantitative statistical methodology, history, clinical practice and science, journalism, and political issues. Since 2005, Jones has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Physician Assistant Education, PAEA’s peer reviewed journal, following many years of membership on that publication’s editorial review and advisory boards. He is credited with raising the journal’s scholarly content and status within the profession. Jones has also been an editorial board member for Physician Assistant and the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, and is currently on the board of the Journal of Dermatology Physician Assistants. He is a member of the World Association of Medical Editors. Jones was president of the Association in 1999–2000 and has served the Association in many other capacities, particularly in research-related positions. He has been the recipient of many awards and honors, as well as consultant and advisor, for a number of organizations. The PAEA Partnership Award This year’s Partnership Award, which honors an institution outside of formal PA program circles that has made an outstanding contribution to excellence in PA education, went to the Emergency Physicians of Tidewater (EPT), in Tidewater, Virginia. EPT was nominated by the Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) PA Program, and Craig Hricz, the PA member of the board of directors for EPT, accepted the award on its behalf. EPT, created in 1967, is one of the largest, private, physician-owned, multihospital groups in the country. Seventy-four supervising board certified physicians in emergency medicine and 28 PAs, many of whom are graduates of Eastern Virginia Medical School, comprise this group. EPT practices out of five hospitals and one free standing emergency room in Southeastern Virginia and tallies more than 335,000 patient visits per year. Since the inception of the EVMS PA program in 2001, EPT has provided outstanding medical education to hundreds of the program's students. Last year alone, it delivered 5,000 clinical rotation hours to students. The faculty of the residency program and other EPT physicians lecture at the program and precept students during their supervised clinical practice sessions. EPT has partnered with the PA program for two of its faculty members to have a clinical day with the EPT group and frequently employs the EVMS graduates. The PA program faculty credited EPT’s willing support, the teaching and training it provides to the PA students, the clinical practice opportunities it makes available to PA faculty, and its employment of the program’s graduates as demonstrating unparalleled support for the EVMS PA Program and the PA profession. Excellence Through Diversity Award The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio received this year’s PAEA Excellence Through Diversity Award. The program showed outstanding commitment to and implementation of specific strategies and activities designed to foster the diversity of PA program faculty, staff, and student body. Judith E. Colver, MMS, PA-C, director of the San Antonio program, accepted the award. The program developed a course entitled “Cultural Issues in Health,” which provides PA students with an overview of the diversity of the population and its impact on health and health care delivery in South Texas. It also addresses such issues as culture, language, literacy, socioeconomic status, and complementary and alternative medicine, with an emphasis on San Antonio and the region, as well as exposing students to medical Spanish. A community medicine service project is the program’s master’s degree capstone activity. Several imaginative projects have been undertaken by the students:
The program has recently developed a distant educational site to begin this fall in which a cohort of PA students will complete two of the three-year program at its Laredo Extension Campus in Laredo, which is 90-95% Hispanic. This effort reflects the program’s belief that individuals will stay in their home area to practice, that the presence of students in Laredo will serve as advertisement for the program, and that more local individuals will become interested in becoming PAs. FUNDING AWARDS FOR RESEARCH GRANTS AAPA/PAEA Research Awards
PAEA Research Institute Grants
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