Institute for Medical Education

Membership

The Institute for Medical Education (IME) is an inclusive organization with two tiers of advanced membership—Fellow Educator and Master Educator. We encourage all medical and science educators throughout the Mount Sinai Health System to consider applying for membership, and we look forward to working with you to further strengthen our shared educational mission to enhance our teaching community.

Advanced Membership (Fellow and Master Educators)

Advanced membership is open to faculty members who are in good standing for at least one year at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and our affiliate institutions. We encourage MD, MPH, and PhD faculty to apply.

We offer two advanced levels of membership for those who have demonstrated excellence and have made significant contributions to medical education:

  • Fellow Educator – Advanced membership awarded to those faculty who have demonstrated a significant commitment to teaching or education and have shown evidence of scholarly work in medical education.
  • Master Educator – Advanced membership acknowledges the highest level achievable for a faculty educator at the Icahn School of Medicine. This designation confers a distinct honor to faculty who have demonstrated exceptional performance in the field of medical education and requires demonstration of educational scholarship. Master Educators have generally attained career honors or success in several areas of medical education and may already serve in key educational roles within our institution. Master Educators will also serve as mentors to Institute Fellows and other educators.

Recognition at both of these levels brings with it the responsibility to contribute actively to the teaching community. The application serves as an educator portfolio that helps showcase the quality of your work. All faculty wishing to be considered, apply for Fellow membership, and a selection committee determines who qualifies for Master Educator membership.

There are many benefits of advanced membership, including:

  • Recognition as a distinguished educator who has made outstanding scholarly contributions in the field of education
  • Involvement with educational issues at the institutional level
  • Mentorship and guidance in educational career advancement, as well as opportunities to formally mentor other educators
  • Opportunities to provide support for the Institute's programs and mission
  • Participation in a cross-departmental community of dedicated educators

A Fellow or Master Educator member will have a term limit of two years at which time the Fellow or Master Educator must submit an activity summary to ensure that the requirements of membership have been maintained.

Membership FAQs

The following answers provide additional details about membership in the Institute.

Faculty who dedicate a large portion of their careers to teaching and education, and have some scholarly work associated with their educational projects or teaching, should consider applying.

We require evidence of scholarship because our purpose is to help educators advance in their careers. Scholarship must be demonstrated for academic promotion and for recognition at the regional and national levels, which means you must have clear goals, and use appropriate methods and outcomes assessments.

We are working to nurture the growth of scholarship in education at Mount Sinai to maximize the potential of our educators. Therefore, we require a minimum level of engagement with the larger educational community as evidence of dissemination for Fellows, and of educational scholarship for Master Educators. Though dissemination/scholarship is only one piece of our selection criteria, it often generates the most confusion and concern.

This type of membership is not the correct avenue for recognition of a master teacher who has not and does not plan to pursue scholarly work in education, or who has not engaged with the larger educational community by attending regional or national conferences to improve teaching or developing curriculum, for example. While such teachers are the lifeblood of our teaching community and are highly valued, there are other mechanisms to recognize and reward them, including our annual Excellence in Teaching Awards.

Examples of activities you might include in your application for the Institute’s five educational categories that we consider:

  • Direct Teaching – List your experience with clinical teaching in wards or outpatient facilities, classroom teaching and leading small groups, including undergraduate medical education, graduate medical education, and continuing medical education.
  • Innovative Curriculum Design and/or Assessment – Describe any online or live course that you designed, small or large, or series of educational sessions you developed that target any level of learner.
  • Advising/Mentoring – Describe any project advising/mentoring or career mentoring you have done in any field. You will need to provide proof of your excellence as a mentor through feedback from mentees or chairs, or by the accomplishments of your mentees.
  • Education Administration and Leadership – List leadership positions you have held, such as a course or clerkship director, a program director, a dean, or any leadership position in a national society.
  • Education Research and Scholarship – List any surveys, outcomes assessments, slide sets, publications, or MedEdPORTAL submissions you have done.

Each activity will be assessed based on three criteria: quantity, quality, and dissemination, defined and described as:

  • Quantity: There should be evidence of sufficient interaction with learners based on time and volume, and/or impact on learners. Your work clearly should show your dedication of time to education.
  • Quality: There should be evidence that your work clearly is of excellent quality. Ideally, you use assessment to guide subsequent educational activities. Refer to the examples of Evidence of Quality, in ascending order of impact, provided on the application form.
  • Dissemination: There should be evidence that you are disseminating your projects and/or evaluation results to the larger educational community. See examples of Evidence of Dissemination, in ascending order of impact, provided on the application form. Only accepted publications will be counted toward dissemination for the Master Educator designation.

According to the AAMC Consensus Conference on Education Scholarship, education scholarship is public, peer-reviewed, and available for others to build upon. Dissemination, a component of scholarship, requires that your work has been made available to other educators, and you are engaging with the educational community.

The IME seeks to maintain a vibrant, engaged community of educators. To remain in good standing as an advanced member of the Institute, members are expected to actively participate in the community of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and make significant contributions toward advancing the mission and goals of the Institute of Medical Education.

Advanced members must fulfill the minimum participatory expectations every two years. These requirements can be met by:

  • Attending an average of five IME-sponsored events or program per year, calculated as an average of five over a two-year period.
  • Providing educational services in the form of leading and/or participating in Faculty Development sessions, Brown Bag Research Hours, Medical Education Grand Rounds and other medical education focused-workshops offered by the IME.