The conference, hosted by the Health Professions Education Institute and co-sponsored by Faculty Affairs and Medical Education, is a wonderful annual opportunity for faculty, staff, and students passionate about teaching to connect with fellow educators.
The conference featured an awards session recognizing outstanding faculty and staff at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. This year’s keynote address focused on active learning and was presented by course and discipline directors from both the CLT and WS campuses.
Attendees also participated in oral presentations, breakout sessions, and a poster session with a closing social hour to conclude the day.
9:30 - 10:15 2026 School of Medicine Teaching and Staff Awards - Auditorium (Level 2)
10:15 - 11:30 Keynote - 3300
11:30 - 12:45 LUNCH + Works in Progress (WIP) Roundtable - 3301
12:45 - 2:00 Oral Presentations - Auditorium (Level 2)
2:15 - 3:45 Breakout Sessions - 3300, 3301, 3211A, 3211B
3:45 - 4:30 Poster Sessions/Social Hour - 3rd floor Hallway
Metabolism Meets Medicine: Using Active Learning to Connect Pathways to Patients
Patrick Fisher; Lauren King; Joshua Waynick
Step into the classroom. This session immerses participants in active learning techniques tailored for medical education, offering a firsthand experience of evidence-based teaching strategies that promote higher-order reasoning and meaningful engagement. Attendees will see these methods in action — then hear directly from a learner panel bringing student voices and lived experiences of active learning curricula to the conversation.
Objectives
- Distinguish between passive and active instructional approaches.
- Identify how active learning strategies can promote higher-order clinical reasoning in a foundational science context.
- Apply collaborative, case-based techniques to integrate basic science mechanisms with clinical problem-solving.
AI Enhanced MedEd Content Creation
Room: 3300
Presenters: Deeksha Sikri, MBBS, MD; Peter Fuerst, PhD; Airyn Hutt, MS1; Andrew Brola, MS1; Olga Mavridis, MS1; Dhruv A. Patel, MS1
Description
This interactive session introduces participants to practical uses of AI in medical education, including generating teaching materials and improving outputs through structured prompting strategies using context, learners, input, output and more. Participants will gain hands-on experience evaluating and refining AI-generated content while learning how to responsibly integrate AI tools into their educational workflows.
Objectives
- Analyze the factors contributing to variable AI-generated outputs, including prompt specificity, learner level and input structure, to identify limitations and opportunities for improvement.
- Apply a systematic framework to prompt for and create specific educational content with human-in-the-loop validation.
- Evaluate AI-generated educational content, such as multiple-choice questions and case vignettes, for accuracy, appropriateness and alignment with medical education standards.
- Review an overview of AI tools and envision further integration of AI tools, including generative and agentic AI systems, into educational workflows while adhering to institutional policies, ethical considerations and best practices for responsible use.
Designing Integrated Active Learning Across Foundational, Clinical, and Health Systems Sciences
Room: 3211A
Presenters: Christopher Burns, PhD; Michele Birch, MD; Deeksha Sikri, MBBS, DNB; Lauren King, PhD; Christopher Gillette, PhD
Description
This hands-on, interactive workshop empowers participants to design integrated active learning experiences across foundational, clinical and health systems sciences. The session begins with a brief, practical primer on active learning, highlighting simple, high-impact strategies that can be implemented immediately. Participants then apply these principles to design integrated sessions across disciplines and professions and identify practical approaches to overcome common barriers to integration.
Objectives
- Apply core principles of active learning to design an integrated session in a pre-clerkship or clerkship course.
- Design a set of sessions that spiral through a course or set of courses across disciplines and professions.
- Identify practical strategies, including low-lift approaches, to implement active and integrated learning within existing curricula and develop an action plan to overcome barriers.
So You Think You Want to Launch a New Degree Program at the School of Medicine?
Room: 3211B
Presenters: Erik Brady, PhD; Sydney Owens; Tracy Criswell, PhD; Melissa Johnson, EdD; Emily Lisi, MS, CGC; Jennie McGuire, EdD
Description
This workshop empowers participants to design and implement new graduate-level degree programs at WFUSM. Participants will hear from a panel whose collective experience spans the full proposal development and implementation process as outlined by Wake Forest University and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The session will open with the sharing of overarching perspectives from the panelists in their key focus areas. The session will close with an opportunity for learners to work in small groups to work through the proposal process.
Objectives
At the close of this workshop, learners should be better able to:
- Recognize the key elements of new graduate program proposals.
- Build a coherent plan of study aligned to program learning outcomes and degree levels.
- Consider cost drivers involved in new program development to ensure revenue generation within the WFUSM ecosystem.
- Incorporate outside accreditation standards into program development.
Teaching the Master Clinician of the Future: How to Teach Clinical Reasoning in a New Era
Room: 3301
Moderator: Michael Gibbs, MD, Emergency Medicine
Small Group Facilitators:
- John Green, MD, Trauma Surgery
- Christyn Magill, MD, Pediatric Emergency Medicine
- Kasser Saba, MD, Adult Acute Care Neurology
- Catherine Trigonis, MD, Family Medicine
Objective
The practice of medicine continues to evolve. As a natural consequence, medical education remains highly dynamic, and factors related to the learner, the environment and expected outcomes must be recognized, carefully considered and thoughtfully addressed. This is particularly relevant to the teaching of clinical reasoning.
Using a small group discussion approach, the facilitators will address the following questions related to the teaching of clinical reasoning:
Discussion Questions
-
Question 1: As you teach the essential skill of clinical reasoning to your learners:
- What are your unique challenges today?
- How have these challenges evolved over your career?
- What approaches and tactics have you found to be effective?
- Question 2: How do you modify your teaching of clinical reasoning to impact learners at different levels of training?
- Question 3: How do you assess how your learner is implementing clinical reasoning into their practice?
- Question 4: How can you help a learner develop the same skills in different environments?
Alexa Dameron, Mia Ferry, Rebecca Palmer, Leila DeWitt
Using academic admissions data to predict PA training attrition: a survival analysis approach
Chris Gillette
Bridging the Urban-Rural Training Gap: Launching a Sustainable Rural Clinical Curriculum
Dawn Caviness, Truett Smith, Cragin Greene
Uncovering Socioeconomic Predictors of Medical Student Success
Amber Waddle, Andrea Anderson, Michael Tucker, Nicholas Hartman
Pro Humanitate: Early Professional Identity Formation Through Engagement with Emeritus Faculty
David Mullins, Lindsay Strowd, Michael Gibbs, Scott Furney, Steve Block, Mary Hall, Darcy Reed, Lauren Fowler, Scott Nolt, Christopher Burns, Marcia Wofford, Roy Strowd
Room: 3301
Building Programs of Distinction: Structured Scholarly Opportunities Across Two Campuses
Presenters: Peter Fuerst, Michael Deneus, Jon Goforth, Parker Bryant, Sara Blackwood
A Novel Advanced Practice Provider Training Program in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities
Presenters: Michelle Curtin, Rachel Burti, Yumi Otsuka, Christine Erdie-Lalena
Building Resident Ownership of Care for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disabilities
Presenters: Michelle Curtin, Meghan Baske, Alice Pham
Evaluating a Coaching Program's Impact for Biomedical Science Students Transitioning into Medical Education
Presenters: Julia-Grace Polich, Keyma Clark
Bridging the Gap: How a Nurse Practitioner Program Transformed Diagnostic Reasoning with a Three Dimensions Virtual Cadaver Table
Presenters: Amy Winiger, Leslie Sossoman
Addressing the Gap in PA-Led Research Through an Original Research-Required Doctor of Medical Science Curriculum
Presenters: Natalie Smith, Kelly Conner
Integrating Content Curation into Medical Education Through a Self-Directed Infographic Exercise: A Case Study in Evidence-Based Medicine
Presenters: Chris Gillette, Jenna Sims, David Mullins
Access to Health Care in Rural Appalachia: A Discrete Choice Experiment in Health Professions' Trainees
Presenters: Chris Gillette, Sarah O'Neal, Esita Patel, Jan Ostermann, Dawn Caviness, Chris Everett, Dawn Goel, Casey Stephens, Laiton Steele, Quazi Minhaz Tabussum
Impact of Facilitator Guides for Resident-Led Inpatient General Medicine Chalk Talks
Presenter: Callen Conroy
A Backward Design Framework for Creating Vertical Integration of Clinical Content in Pre-Clerkship Courses
Presenter: David Mullins
Bridging the Gap: Rural Health Representation in the Wake Forest University School of Medicine MD Curriculum
Presenter: Constance Safley
Expanding Psychiatry Training Curriculum in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities
Presenters: Michelle Curtin, Cecilia Albers
Team-Based Learning Versus Lecture-Based Instruction for Chest Radiograph Interpretation in Physician Associate Education: A Quasi-Experimental Study
Presenters: Kelsey Kehrli, Kelly Conner, Lauren Eyadiel, Caroline B. Sisson, Natalie Smith
Students Address Food Insecurity in Heart Failure: A Learner-Assisted Pilot Program to Assess Food Insecurity in Patients Discharged After Heart Failure Exacerbation
Presenters: Kennedy Combs, Brianna Haller, Padageshwar Sunkara, William Lippert, Leah Snipe
What's on the Board Matters: Turning Whiteboards into Readmission Busters
Presenter: Suneel Parvathareddy
Evaluating the Effect of the Problem-Based Learning Instructional Methodology on Dispositional Learning of the Students: A Mixed Method Study
Presenters: Amin Shah, Abigail Carlson, Kimberly Wiseman, Roy Strowd, David Popoli, Tafline Arbor, Brooks McPhail, Lauren Fowler, Deeksha Sikri, Lauren King, Christopher Burns
Integrating Immunology and Pathology Through Collaborative Concept Mapping: A Visual Active Learning Approach
Presenters: Lauren King, Deeksha Sikri
Improving Child Protection Education of Medical Trainees
Presenters: Nicole Barrett, Kendra Ham
Beyond Persistent Teams: Leveraging Academic Houses to Support Weekly Rotating Teams in TBL and Active Learning in the Pre-Clerkship Curriculum
Presenters: Christopher Burns, Tafline Arbor, Patrick Fisher, Lauren Fowler, Melinda Ingiamo, Lauren King, Brooks McPhail, Amin Shah, Deeksha Sikri
Pathology Thread Curriculum: A Maturation Spectrum
Presenters: Michael Beaty, Peter Fuerst
Innovation Through Collaboration: How a Medical Spanish Program Builds Up from Individual Strengths
Presenters: Carmen Perez-Munoz, Mariana Rodriguez-Pardy
Surveying WFUSM Medical Students on Knowledge of and Attitudes Toward High-Value Care: Before and After Integration of Cost Awareness Curriculum
Presenters: Isabella Waung, Caitlin Tedeschi, Sujeeth Krishna Shanmugam, Kristina Henderson-Lewis
From Scalpel to Slide: An Interprofessional Model for Sustainable Gross Pathology Education Using Surgical Residuals
Presenters: Deeksha Sikri, Marina Barankevich
Cooking Up a Nutrition Curriculum
Presenters: Lauren Jonas, Pinyu Chen, Brittany Browning, Vanessa Baute
Mitigating Burnout Through Reflection and Connection: Resident Perspectives on Creating a Meaningful Clinical Learning Environment
Presenters: Kristen Zeller, Nancy Edwards, Randi Stanulis, Jessica Kohler, Ethan Stonerook, Lucas Neff, Greg Waters
Fostering Resilience in Medical Students Through Structured Training
Presenters: Marissa Millard, Kimberly Wiseman, David Popoli
Character-Driven, Curriculum-Connected: Programming with a Purpose
Presenter: Kerri Walsh
Advanced Practice Provider Fellowship Training Is Associated with Higher Productivity Benchmarks, Compared to Their Non-Fellowship Trained Peers
Presenters: Melissa Bridges, Esita Patel, Anne Vail, Cragin Greene
Bricks That Bind: Faculty-Authored Microlearning to Increase Student Engagement
Presenter: Deeksha Sikri
White Coat Beginnings: A Peer-Led Curricular Innovation to Support First-Year Medical Student Transition
Presenters: Geetika Verma, Marcia Wofford, David Mullins
2026 Award Winners
| Award | Recipient(s) |
|---|---|
| Career Excellence | Dr. Hal Atkinson |
| Teaching | Dr. Kelly Conner |
| Outstanding Medical Education Innovation |
SCHOLAR: Scholarship and Collaboration for Hospitalist Learners in Research Dr. Melanie Marsh and Dr. Ryan Wolf |
| Outstanding Medical Education Innovation |
MD CLT Campus Anatomy Curriculum Dr. Tafline Arbor |
| Innovative Solutions | Chelsea Riley |
| Excellence in Student Support | Brittany Browning; Chelsea Riley |
| Model Teacher | Dr. Donna Williams; Dr. Nick Ashburn |
| Excellence in Teaching Scholarship | Dr. Ryan Wolf; Dr. Stephen Powell |
| Trainee Excellence in Teaching Scholarship | Dr. Michael Boyajian |
| Collaboration and Community | Enid Stanford; Richard O'Neal; Susan Pierce |
Top Abstract Award Winners
Beyond Persistent Teams: Leveraging Academic Houses to Support Weekly Rotating Teams in TBL and Active Learning in the Pre-Clerkship Curriculum
Christopher Burns, Tafline Arbor, Patrick Fisher, Lauren Fowler, Melinda Ingram, Lauren King, Brooks McPhail, Amin Shah, Deeksha Sikri
Pro Humanitate: Early Professional Identity Formation Through Engagement with Emeritus Faculty
David Mullins, Lindsay Strowd, Michael Gibbs, Scott Furney, Steve Block, Mary Hall, Darcy Reed, Lauren Fowler, Scott Nolt, Christopher Burns, Marcia Wofford, Roy Strowd
Using Academic Admissions Data to Predict PA Training Attrition: A Survival Analysis Approach
Chris Gillette
From Scalpel to Slide: An Interprofessional Model for Sustainable Gross Pathology Education Using Surgical Residuals
Deeksha Sikri, Marina Barankevich