Molly Cooke, MD, UCSF professor of medicine, has been appointed director of the Academy of Medical Educators at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. She replaces Daniel Lowenstein, MD, UCSF professor of neurology, who conceptualized the academy and has served as its director since January, 1999.
The Academy of Medical Educators is the first medical school entity in the country to encourage interdisciplinary approaches to undergraduate medical education, provide funding for innovative educational programs, support gifted teachers, sponsor faculty development, and facilitate mentoring of teachers. "The academy is critically important in overcoming the challenges that have confronted academic medical centers over the past ten years. In particular, how we continue to support teachers when there aren't adequate funds to pay for teaching," said Cooke. "The academy will provide a community for people who are devoting effort and creativity to teaching, funding for people who are key figures in teaching and/or active in developing the new UCSF curriculum, and a philanthropy focus for donors interested in supporting creative, innovative, humanistic medical education."
Cooke has a longstanding commitment to medical education. She is a founding director and now co-director of "Foundations of Patient Care," a six quarter preceptorship-based course for first and second year students, and co-director of the Center for Collaborative Primary Care, which promotes interaction in research and education among the UCSF Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Dentistry. Cooke has twice received the Kaiser Family Foundation Teaching Award as well as a UCSF Academic Senate Award for Distinction in Teaching. She was the 1996 recipient of the UCSF Chancellor's Award for the Advancement of Women.
A graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine, Cooke joined the UCSF faculty in 1983, after completing her residency and a fellowship at UCSF. As the founding chair of the ethics committee at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center, she is an expert on the ethical problems arising in urban public hospitals, particularly those associated with HIV illness. Her research has concentrated on bioethical issues, ethics of HIV, occupational risk and responsibility, the role of primary care physicians in HIV illness and the attitudes and experiences of HIV-infected individuals participating in federally funded research programs.
Members of the academy (selected by application and peer review) become eligible for endowed chairs for teaching, accelerated faculty promotions, partial salary support for dedicated teaching time, and grants to support innovative teaching efforts and curriculum development, explained Cooke. Over the next five years, the medical school anticipates raising funds for 30 endowed chairs to be used for support of core leadership positions in the new curriculum.