University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty member Aimee Gardner, PhD, will be working some 4,300 miles from the CU Anschutz Medical Campus come September, studying and teaching in Dublin, Ireland, on a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award.
Gardner, who serves as associate dean for faculty development and director of the Academy of Medical Educators at the CU School of Medicine, will conduct her Fulbright research at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), continuing work already begun with researchers there.
“I'm going to be working with renowned scholars who created the leadership institute there and have done some really amazing work in developing programs that leverage simulation and experiential learning,” says Gardner, professor of GI, trauma, and endocrine surgery in the CU Department of Surgery. “I’ll also be integrating my work with faculty from the RCSI Centre for Positive Health Sciences, where they pull in principles from positive psychology and focus on methods for enhancing people's morale and happiness at work.”
Gardner plans to bring insights on simulation and experiential learning back to Colorado after her time in Ireland.
“We know that experiential learning is the most effective kind of learning,” she says. “We want to place people in a high-fidelity environment where they can experience the realism and the emotions and see the impact of their behaviors and actions. Simulation-based education capitalizes on the psychology of how people learn and makes things stick when they're introduced to new concepts, procedures, ideas, or workflows. It’s going to be a lot of fun to build new programs that leverage this modality and also expand the traditional scope of leadership topics by bringing in the positive psychology literature."
Revamping the academy
Gardner joined the CU School of Medicine faculty in October 2023 to help create the Office for Faculty Development and revamp the Academy of Medical Educators. She has spent the past nine months focused on building community and creating faculty development programs that are engaging, evidence-based, and pragmatic to support all educators across the CU School of Medicine.
“My background is industrial organizational psychology, which allows for a fun integration of workplace science into the multi-pronged efforts we’re doing in the Offices for the Faculty Experience, led by our Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Chief Wellbeing Officer, Lotte Dyrbye, MD,” Gardner says.
With her colleagues in the Offices for the Faculty Experience — Abigail Lara, MD, Steven Lowenstein, MD, Miriam Post, MD, and Jennifer Reese, MD — Gardner says the goal is to develop support systems and resources for faculty members to thrive in their roles as clinicians, educators, leaders, and scientists.
Learning and experiencing culture
Gardner is excited to learn more about programs at the RCSI, she says, where faculty members incorporate a good deal of hands-on learning and use artificial intelligence to gamify the training process. She also is excited for the mix of learning and teaching that the Fulbright scholarship offers.
“I'll be a visiting professor, so I'll be responsible for leading some lectures and being engaged in some of their symposia,” she says. “The first few weeks I’ll be hitting the ground running — developing connections and collaborations, seeing where the different pockets of expertise exist across different departments and units, and then getting quickly to work, because I’ll only be there for three months.”
Gardner also plans to bring her husband and two toddlers along on the journey, and the family will do some sightseeing along with her academic work.
“Part of the mission of the Fulbright is exploration and discovery, building community and awareness of other countries,” she says. “There is an expectation that you're not just sitting in an office doing work; that you're getting out in the community, developing long-lasting relationships, and creating excitement for future collaborations. I aim to fulfill that mission as best I can.”
