Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Food animal veterinarians play a critical role in maintaining a safe food supply by protecting animal health and well-being while promoting public health. Due to the important role of these highly trained animal health professionals, food animal veterinary education is a national interest. Food animal veterinary educators at 32 United States veterinary colleges are the gateway to the food animal veterinary profession. Demand for academic food animal veterinary educators in increasing. Anticipated job openings require veterinarians with specialized training. The food animal veterinary profession will be facing a major setback if faculty positions remain vacant. Currently there is a small pool of qualified individuals to fill open food animal faculty positions. Retention of current faculty and attraction of new clinical faculty is a critical priority for any institution. The primary goal of this project is to develop a food animal educator academy to provide formal interinstitutional networking, educational resource sharing, professional development coaching and mentorship for early career food animal veterinary educators to minimize attrition of critical faculty. The overall impact of this project will be to increase retention of early career food animal veterinary educators critical for the future education of food animal veterinary students. The food animal veterinary educator academy will consist of an annual in person workshop and monthly videoconference sessions. Upon successful completion of the food animal educator academy participants will complete a mentored project tailored to the specific interest and needs of the participating educator.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of this project is to create a Food Animal Educator Academy to provide formal interinstitutional networking, educational resource sharing, professional development coaching and mentorship for early career food animal veterinary educators to minimize attrition of critical faculty. This project will also demonstrate and evaluate the value of this approach on assisting faculty to achieve professional goals. These goals will be achieved through the development of an annual workshop and monthly videoconference sessions.
Project Methods
The Food Animal Educator Academy will be an 11-month distance continuing education program, supplemented with a 1-day annual workshop taking place alongside a major national conference repeated annually for 3 years. Each participant will have enhanced and year-long engagement through a mentored projected completed by the end of the 1-year academy. This design will provide consistent interaction between early career faculty and content experts. Delivery of the curriculum during the annual workshop and monthly videoconferences will be a combination of didactic lecture and interactive topic discussions. The evaluation plan includes formative evaluation to assess progress and provide feedback for continuous improvement and summative evaluation to document project outputs, outcomes, and impact. Evaluation will be led by an independent evaluator. Evaluation is based upon the project logic model to assess the extent to which the project obtains the overall goal to increase retention of early career food animal veterinary educators. Data collection analysis is focused on providing timely information for continuous improvement. A brief participant survey will be administered at the end of each annual workshop and monthly video conference, which will utilize a Likert scale to assess perceptions of quality, relevance, and usefulness, outcomes, and an open-ended field for additional comments. External evaluation will review project documents and conduct interviews and/or focus groups with PIs each semester assess progress. An annual summary evaluation of findings will be provided to the project team.