Last week I was told I had officially been approved for promotion to associate professor and granted tenure. I wrote about how emotional this was for me in my RWL Newsletter here, so I'm not going to gush on again. I am moved by all the support I have received on the socials - even from some folks I don't know.
So I am the proverbial dog who has caught the car, and the question is, "Now what?"
Well, one thing is I have decided to bring back this blog. I'm planning to write about some of my teaching efforts and ideas, maybe share some raw thoughts on research, and talk about my efforts to help build my department, college, and university. So hopefully it will be of some interest to someone, but at least it will be a place for me to reflect and work out in public some of my thoughts and maybe get some feedback.
Being a professor you have three functions: teaching, service, and research. So a few thoughts about going forward:
Teaching
I'm still teaching primarily at the undergraduate level, though I have been working for several years with some executive leadership training for physicians. I've shifted away from teaching the management sequence over the last two years, which I have mixed feelings about. I was feeling a bit burned out with those classes, so it's good to get a break. But I also miss them because they were an opportunity to really engage with the students. I continue to teach the finance sequence and feel like I've achieved a solid level of comfort with those classes. I have taught health econ a couple of times, but will be handing that off to a new colleague next year who is a "real" economist (i.e., he actually does research in economics whereas I do not). I taught a health systems class this summer and hope to continue that next year. That is a fun class because it's pretty basic, but also very high level - you get to talk about the overall system, rather than get down in the weeds (for example, trying to explain how an encounter converts into a bill using the RBRVS). I also picked up the pre- and post-practicum courses for the major as part of taking on the internship program (more in service). I will be working to stand up an MHA program in the near future (more in service). This may allow me to teach at the graduate level again, which I would love to do.
Going forward, in the near-term, my main goal is to improve my delivery of the pre- and post-practicum courses. They're a little shapeless at this point, and I want to make them more meaningful and engaging (while also recognizing that they are 1 and 2 credits respectively).
I also want to continue to think about how I can create more open educational resources (OER). I really want to be able to create more resources for colleagues in the field and for people who want to learn, and be able to give them away. So I'll be talking more about that as I go on.
Service
The thing that takes up the bulk of my energy right now is the internship. Our department requires a 400-hour internship between junior and senior years, though during COVID we have truncated the hours dramatically (only 60 hours in the field during 2020, 120 during 2021). I took over the internship in March of 2020, literally just a week before the University went into lockdown. Talk about a baptism by fire. Almost all of the internships that had been scheduled were canceled that year. I spent from March through December trying to get all of the students placed. The last one finished his internship just in time for graduation. All of the calling and begging for the class of '20 paid off for the class of '21. Even though there was still significant uncertainty going into the spring, I was ultimately able to place all 35 of our students for the summer, and 31/35 landed paying opportunities and well over 120 hours of experience. I am looking forward to normalcy for the summer of '22 and continuing to grow and improve the quality of experiences the students get during their internships. I am tremendously grateful to our preceptors and partner organizations who are hosting our students. It was a leap of faith for many of them to take students.
I mentioned above that I am hoping to stand up an MHA program. The department had an MHA program 20 years ago, but for various reasons it was allowed to go dormant. My work with the physician leadership program has convinced me that there is a need in our community (broadly defined) for a high-quality program focused on providers. So that is my next major task.
I continue to be engaged with professional organizations - especially ACHE and HFMA. I will take on the education chair for the Northern New England Healthcare Executives chapter in '22. I'm also working with the local HFMA chapter and I am considering maybe getting involved with MGMA, though that has been difficult due to scheduling challenges.
Research
This is where "dog catches car" really comes in. I think I did some interesting research during my pre-tenure period, and if you step back and squint a bit, you can see how it mostly hangs together in a general theme of human resource development (HRD). I continue to be passionate about the HRD topics, especially mentorship and leadership development, broadly lumped under a careers umbrella. To me this a micro perspective for my larger question, which I think is how to create a free and prosperous society. I think meaningful work is critical for human flourishing, and if we want to be free, we need to help each other reach for our maximum potential. The macro perspective of a free and prosperous society is still of real interest to me. What does that mean? How do we shape the social institutions that constitute our environment to help individuals reach their maximum potential? This is where I think I want to spend more time, and where I might use some of the flexibility I now have as a result of getting tenure.
I've been reading several political economy books and really feeling my original economics training waking back up and wanting to come back out and play. Healthcare is largely about knowledge and uncertainty, and the insights from the Austrian school seem particularly well suited for thinking about the field. Having just taught Health Systems again has really brought that back into view for me. I thought I might pursue such a track when I wrote USING THE MANY-TO-MANY CAPABILITIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR PUBLIC HEALTH COMMUNICATION. So we'll see. I'd like to think about how to bring my economics training back into use. Since I'm not a technician like most health economists, I'll need to find a different approach.
I'm excited to continue to grow as a researcher, and having caught the car, I am worried that I will do what every tenure committee fears - just lay down and bask in the freedom, rather than embrace it and do more.
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That's a review of what I'm thinking on my first day on this side of tenure. I don't want to get comfortable. I want to keep chasing cars and keep growing. Otherwise, what was the point?
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