I hope that you all are well and had a wonderful holiday season. I am both honored and humbled to be the new President of IAMSE, an organization that I view as my educational home. As we move into the new year, I want to reflect on 2019 and discuss some of exciting projects that are in store for IAMSE in 2020.
This past year was an outstanding one for IAMSE. In 2019, our membership expanded to over 1600, including educators from approximately 50 countries! We had a very successful meeting in Roanoke, VA, USA which turned out to be the largest gathering in our history, with over 660 attendees. We also organized IAMSE-branded symposia and workshops at educational meetings in the US, Singapore, Colombia, Austria, and the Netherlands. Submissions for our journal, Medical Science Educator, rose significantly; we formalized arrangements for our manuals series to be published by our journal publisher, Springer; and our Webcast Audio Seminar series remained a strong educational tool. In addition, we distributed more travel scholarships for faculty and students to attend the annual meeting and more faculty and student educational research grants than at any time in our history. Finally, our Committee for the Advancement of Medical Science Educators (CAMSE) completed their work on a Medical Science Educator Portfolio Toolkit, which will be available to IAMSE members in the near future.
The upcoming year looks to be an exciting year for our organization. We are continuing our efforts to enhance the global branding of IAMSE in 2020 and we will be organizing sessions at meetings in the US, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, England, Scotland, and the Netherlands. In addition, for the first time, we are organizing a special one-day IAMSE conference, which will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on February 28 in conjunction with the Ottawa Conference. There is still time to register for the conference and we would love to have you attend! We entered into a new collaboration with the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) and look forward to formally attending their meeting and have them attend ours. We also will be establishing our new Ambassador program, in which representatives from countries outside of the US will work to increase the global visibility and member services of IAMSE. Our annual meeting will be held in Denver, CO, USA in 2020, and the program looks to be outstanding. In addition, we look for continued growth of Medical Science Educator and our Webcast Audio Seminar Series, and we expect to publish two new manuals. We are also growing our travel scholarship and educational research grant programs even further. Finally, be on the lookout for new initiatives to enhance diversity, inclusion, and equity in IAMSE and in the educational community.
It is important to remember that we are only as strong as you, our members. Many thanks to all of you who have worked (and continue to work) so hard on behalf of our organization. If you would like to become more involved in IAMSE or have suggestions as to how we can improve our services, we would love to hear from you. All the best on the New Year!
Sincerely yours,
Neil Osheroff, Ph.D.
President, International Association of Medical Science Educators
Professor of Biochemistry and Medicine
John G. Coniglio Chair in Biochemistry
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine