Chair's Message

One of the goals of the Department of Surgery is to help all faculty achieve successful careers, in the ways individuals deem their goal for success. In a period of increasing demands for many different efforts, it is important that there be a coordinated support system to help faculty achieve career goals. It is for this reason that a faculty career development program for the Department of Surgery has been instituted. This program does not supplant the role of the Chair or Division Chiefs in this effort, nor assume their responsibility. Instead, this program will make existing efforts better and more understandable to the faculty.

This career development program will focus on faculty in their first 10 years at UNC, but not be limited to that group. This program will provide not only academic direction for faculty members, but its success is dependent on the participation from all faculty. The goals of the career development program will be:

1. Help faculty establish their own individual goals for career success.
2. Provide a regular and effective means of monitoring individual career plans with encouragement and suggestions on how to achieve goals.
3. Help individuals develop and modify their career aspirations as they mature through the developmental stages and/or change their individual goals.

The structure of the career development program will have two principle components. The first is the existing structure of the Department Chair and Division Chiefs who will insure newly recruited faculty have career goals that are consistent with the expectations of the Department and respective Division. The second will be the Faculty Career Development Advisory Committee which will meet quarterly, review individual faculty development and overall departmental strategies, and whose members will meet individually with faculty to help guide them in career development. Each quarter this committee will present its review at a Division Chiefs’ meeting. The committee efforts and those of the division chiefs will be coordinated. This group will develop a departmental web-site for career development, with information about promotion and tenure, resources for academic activities, and institutional links.

The success of this program will be evaluated continually to improve the process, and more formally in two to three years to assess whether it is meeting its goals.

Anthony A. Meyer, MD, PhD