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November 2008 |  |
PAEA Presents Annual Faculty Awards and Funds Grant ProposalsOne of the highlights of the Annual Education Forum is PAEA's awards luncheon, at which the Association presents its annual faculty awards to individuals selected by the PAEA Nominations and Awards Committee. Seven awards were presented this year at a particularly celebratory luncheon event, while five faculty were acknowledged for their winning research proposals to two PAEA grant cycles.
Bettie Coplan receives the New Faculty Award from PAEA President Elect Justine Strand.
Bettie H. Coplan, MPAS, PA-C, a faculty member at the PA program at Midwestern University College of Health Sciences, in Glendale, Arizona, received the 2008 New Faculty Award for Professional Excellence. To be honored in this category, Coplan had to demonstrate noteworthy contributions to PA education in one or more areas: teaching, scholarship, or professional service. Her colleagues felt she was “exceedingly competent” in virtually all of these. Coplan was selected in part for her skill as a lecturer and her ability to combine her unique sense of humor with a professional and effective delivery. As a member of the program’s clinical year committee, she works to improve clinical rotations for students, locate new sites, and trouble-shoot clinical issues. Coplan also brings her clinical experience in correctional medicine, family medicine, and gastroenterology to her current clinical practice in gastroenterology, where she regularly precepts students. Coplan has taken easily to scholarly activity. She has already been published in JAAPA and coauthored an NCCPA Foundation grant, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Physician Assistant Education. As one of her colleagues put it, Coplan is “a model young PA faculty member: clinically skilled, highly motivated towards professional and personal excellence, a talented teacher, and driven to succeed in every aspect of academia.” Coplan attributed her success to the mentors among her colleagues: “I have had at least four or five: Alison Essary, Michel Statler, Jim Meyer, Jim Stoehr, and really everyone at my program with whom I’ve had the opportunity to work. They all have made an effort to make sure that I know what I’m doing.”
Tony Brenneman receives
Brenneman has also been a stalwart member of the PAEA Education Committee. Committee Chair Emily WhiteHorse described the “great vision” and “lighthearted humor” that he brings to the group, as well as a knack for innovative formats, such as the clinical coordinators presentation series he helped develop for the Annual Education Forum in 2006. Brenneman has excelled in the award criteria of teaching, research, and administration. His skills as an educator were recognized when he was selected to complete the prestigious Teaching Scholars Program at the Carver College of Medicine in 2005. After only four years as a faculty member, Brenneman has authored five articles or chapters and co-authored five additional publications. He has successfully mentored 26 masters’ students through their projects and degrees, participated in 12 professional conference presentations, and been funded for two PAEA Research Institute grants. His recent AAPA poster presentation, “Acute Myelogenous Leukemia Complicated by an Atypical and Severe Fungal Infection,” was awarded first place for Clinical and Professional Posters and was also selected as “Best of Show.” Brenneman, who practices in internal medicine in adult bone marrow transplant at University of Iowa hospitals and clinics, has adapted quickly to his role in clinical education at the PA program and has demonstrated a quick understanding of and support for the program’s mission. He has served on numerous program, college, and university committees. In accepting the award, Brenneman acknowledged his faculty colleagues at the Iowa program and said: “The pleasure of being part of such an organization and group as PAEA has been is its own reward…and I am both honored and humbled to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to be on this journey with all of you and for the recognition through this award. I feel quite fortunate to be a member of this great body of PA educators.”
Carl Fasser was honored with this year's Master Faculty Award.
Carl Fasser, PA, director and associate professor at the PA program in the School of Allied Health Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, was awarded the 2008 Master Faculty Award for his exemplary record in PA education, administration, professional service, and advocacy. Fasser’s teaching abilities drew praise from his educational colleagues for the ease with which he engages his audiences and for his delivery of thought-provoking messages. He has been a prolific scholar for more than three decades. He has authored or co-authored 43 articles, published in professional, peer-reviewed journals, including the PA Journal, Physician Assistant, the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, the Journal of Allied Health, Academic Medicine, and the Journal of Physician Assistant Education. With a similarly impressive record in grant writing, Fasser has been a project director, PI, or major contributor on 28 funded grant applications totaling more than $16 million. Fasser is a founding member of the AAPA and has twice served as its president — in 1974 and again in 1980. In 1985 he was elected president of APAP, the forerunner to PAEA. He is a founding director of the PA programs at Baylor University in Houston and the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston. In his fourth decade of PA education, Fasser mentors students and faculty and directs one of the top PA programs in the country. He practices in a family clinic in Houston and is a founding board member of the PA History Society. He has been at the forefront of nearly every major development and milestone of the PA profession over the past 40 years. His colleagues have called him a “unique individual who excels, academically and clinically, as a teacher, researcher, scholar, and practicing physician assistant,” and more simply as “an educator’s educator.” Fasser received a standing ovation from his colleagues.
Meredith Davison receives a sculpture piece as recipient of the Research Achievement Award.
Meredith Davison, PhD, associate dean of academic services and associate director of the PA program at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine–Tulsa, was honored with the PAEA Research Achievement Award. Since Davison’s first peer-reviewed publication appeared in 1970, she has contributed to the medical, basic science, and pharmacologic literature through such respected and prestigious periodicals as Pharmacotherapeutics, Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, European Journal of Pharmacology, American Family Physician, Neuropharmacology, and American Journal of Physiology, as well as having been published in PA journals. Not a PA herself, Davison has held leadership roles in PA education and the profession since 1994, when she joined the PA program at Midwestern University Downer’s Grove in Illinois. She was instrumental in developing its master’s program and directed the program at Midwestern University from 1998–2006. She then relocated to Tulsa to develop a new PA program at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine–Tulsa. In 2008, she was appointed associate dean of academic affairs with responsibility for both undergraduate medical and PA education. Davison’s scholarly activities include
Brian Phillips, program director of the Allentown Rescue Mission, accepts the PAEA Partnership Award.
Allentown Rescue Mission was founded in 1900 to serve the city’s homeless male population through the provision of medical and psychiatric services, meals, lodging, and ministry. In 2007 it served more than 800 individuals. The idea of establishing a clinic for the homeless men was pioneered by a student in the DeSales PA program, Brett Feldman. With the help of DeSales PA faculty, the DeSales Free Clinic was born in January 2007 on the mission’s second floor. Feldman continues to practice at the clinic, which extends free medical care to the more than 500 male residents of the shelter and assisted living programs Space for the clinic was renovated and donated by the Allentown Rescue Mission. According to its Executive Director Gary Millspaugh, “Health problems are a major impediment to the recovery process that gets homeless people off the streets and back into the community…A homeless person who is suffering or distracted by illness, injury, or disability cannot find a job and succeed in changing their circumstances.” The PA program receives “tremendous” feedback from the students who are precepted at the clinic, who feel that these experiences enhance their education, both academically and ethically — through gaining an awareness of the social conditions and problems of the homeless and uninsured. This year’s winner has embodied the spirit of the PAEA Partnership Award and is a perfect example of the kind of partnerships that benefits both PA programs and their communities.
Dr. Abdul Massaquoi, academic coordinator at the San Joaquin PA Program, accepts the Diversity Award from PAEA President Elect Justine Strand.
San Joaquin’s faculty, staff, and student body include high percentages of minorities. Of the program’s nine core faculty, seven are minorities, and the program’s percentage of students that is non-white increased from 50 percent in 2003 to 63 percent in 2007, peaking at 75 percent in 2006. San Joaquin’s applicant pool mirrors that of California’s Central Valley, where the program is located, and students and graduates come from a wide variety of immigrant backgrounds, including African, Mexican, Russian, Ukrainian, Iranian, Chinese, Hmong, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, East Indian, Pakistani, and Filipino. In its efforts to develop educational experiences for both faculty and students, the program’s curriculum includes 72 contact hours of coursework approved by the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) as Shortage Area Medical Education Training, with 36 of these hours in medical Spanish. The program maintains a significant number of clinical training experiences in medically underserved areas of need; and nearly 60 percent of the program’s total clinical hours are spent in OSHPD-specified underserved locations. Of San Joaquin’s 2005–2007 graduating classes, 70 percent practice in family medicine, pediatrics, general internal medicine, or women’s health; and more than 60 percent practice in medically undeserved areas. Dr. Massaquoi, in his acceptance remarks, said that his program sees "diversity as a means of consensus building on campus and that, contrary to the views of some people that it undermines high academic standards, it actually enhances them." Massaquoi added that diversity "helps alleviate the doubts and fears we have about one another and creates an atmosphere of mutual understanding, respect, and trust."
Rocky Rackover, the recipient of this year's Outstanding Service Award, with Justine Strand.
Rackover has become most widely recognized for his championing of the PA profession as a natural vehicle for bringing the discoveries of genomics into the clinical arena. During the fall of 2006, he spent a sabbatical as a visiting scholar at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health, where he worked closely with internationally recognized leaders in the field, including Francis Collins and Alan Guttmacher. Dr. Collins acknowledged Rackover for having “played the key role nationally in bringing the PA community to the very forefront of health disciplines in working to integrate the great promise of the Human Genome Project into routine clinical patient care.” Rackover was awarded a U.S. Public Health Service Coin by Acting Surgeon General Rear Admiral Kenneth Moritsugu for arranging the meeting in March 2007 between the leaders of NHGRI and the four national PA organizations. Rackover has also served as the AAPA liaison to the National Coalition for Health Professional Education in Genetics (NCHPEG) and was elected to membership on its board of directors. Rackover’s connections with NCHPEG helped AAPA to obtain a $20,000 NCHPEG grant to develop a Web-based program to educate PAs, PA students, and educators about the role of genetics in primary care. As a radiation oncology PA, Rackover has long been active in cancer prevention and screening and in 1994, was appointed by Governor Robert Casey to the Pennsylvania Cancer Control, Prevention and Research Advisory Board of the Pennsylvania Department of Health. On a national level, Rackover served as director at large on PAEA's board of directors, chaired its Education Committee, and was a member of its Blue Ribbon Panel on the Future of PA Education. Rackover thanked many colleagues for their support of his genetics efforts, and called the meeting at NHGRI “a defining moment in my professional life.” He quoted Francis Collins: “What was created by this group … showed remarkable collaborative capabilities to [advance] genomic medicine with physician assistants as change agents in a way not thought possible before this meeting.” His colleagues gave him a standing ovation. FUNDING AWARDS FOR RESEARCH GRANTSAAPA/PAEA Research Grants Program
PAEA Research Grants Program
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Rising Star Award
Partnership Award
Excellence Through Diversity Award
