Surgery Clerkship Director (Assistant Professor​/Associate Professor​/Full Professor

Position Summary

The Charles

E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University seeks an accomplished surgeon-educator to serve as Surgery Clerkship Director, reporting to the Chair of the Department of Surgery with a secondary academic reporting relationship to the Associate Dean for Medical Education. This leadership role provides strategic direction and oversight for the required Surgery Clerkship within the College’s longitudinal integrated clinical curriculum, ensuring excellence in surgical education, student assessment, faculty engagement, and clinical learning experiences across affiliated training sites.

The Surgery Clerkship Director will work closely with Undergraduate Medical Education leadership, faculty, residents, and affiliated clinical partners to advance curriculum innovation, continuous quality improvement, and compliance with LCME accreditation standards. This position includes a 0.5 FTE educational and administrative appointment and a 0.5 FTE clinical faculty appointment, with the expectation of maintaining an active surgical practice that supports outstanding patient care, bedside teaching, learner mentorship, and surgical resident education.

The successful candidate will have a track record demonstrating a commitment to fostering academic excellence, professionalism, and student success while helping prepare the next generation of physicians.

Primary Responsibilities The Surgery Clerkship Director’s primary responsibilities include but are not limited to the following:
Provide overall leadership, administration, and oversight of the required surgery clerkship across all affiliated clinical training sites. Direct the supervision of medical students during their assigned surgical clerkship experiences throughout the Medical and Surgical Sciences Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship by:
Providing direct clinical supervision and bedside teaching at the Director's primary clinical practice site(s). Maintaining regular communication with site directors, clerkship coordinators, preceptors, and core teaching faculty to ensure consistency in educational experiences and student assessment. Attend monthly Clerkship Director meetings and any additional meetings necessary to review student performance and curriculum implementation issues. Periodically visit all clinical teaching sites for the surgery clerkship to observe and ensure high quality and positive learning environments.

Enhance and continuously refine the surgery clerkship curriculum, in collaboration with the Assistant Dean for Clinical Curriculum, in accordance with LCME accreditation standards and institutional educational objectives. Deliver surgery lectures to various levels of medical students each year and facilitate Diagnosis & Reasoning (DR) rounds for the clerkship students at the College of Medicine during in-person weekly academic half day.

Develop, organize, and oversee the annual schedule of didactic lectures and educational activities, ensuring appropriate faculty participation and instructional quality. Oversee student assessment and evaluation, including preparation and review of narrative evaluations and timely submission of final clerkship grades in coordination with the Surgery Clerkship grading committee. Prepare all student narrative comments for the surgery clerkship that will be included in the students’ Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE/Dean’s Letter).

Provide timely formative and summative feedback to students regarding clinical performance, professionalism, medical knowledge, technical skills, clinical reasoning, and achievement of clerkship learning objectives. Serve as a feedback coach to provide ongoing formative feedback to students, including review of goals achieved, strengths, adequacy of patient load and experiences, and areas for continuing work. Develop individualized performance improvement and/or remediation plans for students demonstrating academic or professional deficiencies, establish measurable goals and timelines, and monitor progress, in collaboration with Year 3 Curriculum Director/Co-Director, and communicate outcomes to the…