Board Reports

Executive Director's Report

Stacy Brungardt, MA, CAE

New Beginnings From a 15-year STFM Veteran

STFM has begun a new journey. After 26 years of leadership from our most capable Roger Sherwood, CAE, on October 1 of 2007, a new era began in the Society staff leadership. Although I’ve been blessed to be a part of this Society for nearly 15 years in various roles, this year has marked a significant new beginning for STFM and a new role for me.

Over the past year, I’ve been asked what I see as the main challenge for STFM. My response is—remaining relevant, a seemingly simple response to what I see as a complex, overarching issue. Put in another way, the Society needs to proactively and continually identify the needs of our members and the discipline and deliver quality programs and services to meet those expectations. Members face a multitude of options about how they can spend their volunteer time and dollars. For our Society to grow and prosper, we need to be razor sharp in understanding the changing needs of our members and family medicine education and then deliver on those opportunities as they fit within our core purpose. This has to be an iterative process that becomes ingrained in how we operate. Our conferences need to offer the latest and best practices in family medicine education. We need to find ways to connect our members with like interests in meaningful ways. We must proactively look for new educational methods and appropriate alliances to improve family medicine. We need to develop, teach, evaluate, and share the best ideas and methods of family medicine and advocate for more resources to improve family medicine education.

How Do We Do This?
Your Board of Directors has been involved in a process of identifying our core values and core purpose. If you’re a Jim Collins fan, you’ll recognize the terms. If you are new to Jim Collins, go here to read more: http://www.jimcollins.com/. With input from the membership, the six values that the STFM Board identified as inherent to our Society are integrity, relationship-centered, openness, nurturing, excellence, and learning. Our core purpose is to advance family medicine to improve health through a community of teachers and scholars.

We’re taking these important pieces and asking ourselves how we use them to identify and define our success as an organization. In other words, we’re starting with the end in mind. Heard that before? Why does STFM matter as an organization? How do we define it, and how do we measure it? As we did with our core purpose, we’ll be gathering input from members along the way. We’ll use these outcomes to better align our programs, services, and resources to what matters most to the success of the Society.

In my first few months on the job, I’ve devoted a significant amount of time focusing on the staff and Board to ensure a smooth transition from one exec to another. Our staff has been remarkable in the transition. I’ve been impressed by their supportive attitudes and their ability to embrace the new ways we are approaching our work together. I am also proud of the dedication and commitment our staff bring to their work. We believe that our work serves an important role in improving family medicine education, and we are looking at new approaches of thinking and behaving as a team to accomplish the work that best serves you, our members. Our core values as a staff are your core values, and we have started a process of aligning staff behaviors and actions with the Society’s core values.

Finally, I want to acknowledge some key contributors who launched into new projects for STFM this past year:

Predoctoral Directors Development Institute—In 2007, this program helped provide important and unique training to 26 fellows who are new or aspiring predoctoral directors. Special thanks to Katie Margo, MD; Kent Sheets, PhD; David Little, MD; Alec Chessman, MD; Paul Paulman, MD; Alison Dobbie, MD, Jeff Stearns, MD; Cathy Pipas, MD; and Dana Greco, CAE, who took this program from idea to successful fruition.

IMG Academies—STFM is indebted to the faculty who launched this new program in 2007. There is a long list of folks who get credit for this, ranging from the faculty who developed the survey and gathered input to the faculty who developed the curriculum and presented it. I’d like to acknowledge the special efforts of our project leads, Kathy Zoppi, PhD, and Laurel Milberg, PhD, and the rest of the faculty of Luigi Tullo, MD; Crystal Cash, MD; Christine Jerpbak, MD; Alan Roth, DO; and Gerry Whelan, MD, for enduring the challenge of developing a new curriculum on a short timeline.

Regional Faculty Development Series Workshop—The Ohio State University faculty stepped up and provided outstanding leadership for one of, if not the, most successful regional faculty development series workshops to date. Larry Gabel, PhD, and Holly Cronau, MD, made a strong leadership team that revised the workshop and brought in some of the top regional leaders in faculty development to this workshop. A record 84 people attended.

These are just a few of the new activities STFM took on in 2007. This past year has been one of the most remarkable ones in my life. I look forward to collaborating with you and other members of the family on new beginnings as we work together to improve health for all.