Leadership Council
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Rongrong Fan, MD | MAHEC Representative
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Jen Fuchs, MD | Novant Representative
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Koyal Jain, MD, MPH, FASN | FLAGshiP Program Co-Leader
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Beka Layton, PhD, CMC, PCP | Scholarship Committee Chair
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Amy Levenson, MD | Events Co-Chair
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Winston Li, MD | TAR HEEL Program Lead
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Jennifer McEntee, MD, MPH, MA.Ed | Passing the Torch Program Lead
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Kristen Scherrer, PhD | Events Co-Chair
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Hillary Spangler, MD | Programs Chair
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Dr. Rongrong Fan earned her medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the MAHEC OB/GYN program. She currently serves as an Academic Advisor for the UNC School of Medicine in Asheville and is a core administrative faculty member with the MAHEC OB/GYN Residency Program. Dr. Fan’s professional interests include medical education—particularly transitions from undergraduate medical education (UME) to graduate medical education (GME) and from GME to clinical practice—as well as osteoporosis, cervical dysplasia, surgical coaching, and peer observation of teaching. Outside of medicine, she enjoys hiking, baking, playing board games, learning new languages, and watching documentaries.
Dr. Fuchs was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and earned her B.S. and B.A. from the University of Richmond, her MD from Wake Forest School of Medicine, and completed her Pediatric Internship/Residency at the VCU Children’s Hospital of Richmond. She then did a Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, TX. She then moved to Dallas, TX, where she was a pediatric hospitalist at UT Southwestern/Dallas Children’s Hospital before returning to North Carolina. Dr. Fuchs’ interests include quality improvement, family-centered rounds, high-value care, pediatric hospital medicine fellowship, and residency education. She was awarded the UT Southwestern Children’s Faculty Teaching Award in 2019. She also runs the national PHM website SOHMlibrary.org along with Dr. Lindsay Chase. When she’s not working, Dr. Fuchs enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and dog, Milo, traveling, baking, painting, and sports.
Dr. Jain completed her internal medicine residency at UConn and trained at UNC for her nephrology fellowship. During her time at UNC, she has held many educator roles, including Renal Block Director, Nephrology fellowship Program Director, and Director of Undergraduate Medical Education in the Department of Medicine. She loves to teach and foster a great learning environment. One of her passions is the intersection between being a trainee during residency and fellowship, and simultaneously serving as an educator to team members. She is excited to work with the AOE to provide the necessary skills to our fellow workforce in educating students, residents, and other trainees. She hopes to partner with the researchers in education and provide formal training to the fellows on research methodology. Dr. Jain aims to foster collaborations among different departments and encourage all our trainees to view education as a vital component of their careers.
Dr. Layton is a behavioral scientist whose research focuses on doctoral and postdoctoral biomedical education and training, as well as graduate career and professional development outcomes, and biomedical workforce development. Her work with graduate students as the Director of Professional Development Programs in the UNC SOM Office of Graduate Education intersects with her education research scholarship. She holds an Associate Professor appointment in the School of Education, co-directs the Certificate in College Science Teaching (https://collegescienceteaching.web.unc.edu/), teaches bio statistics for laboratory scientists (BBSP 710: https://bbsp710.web.unc.edu/), and is also an ICF-credentialled Professional Certified Coach. Her recent publications examine graduate student mental health, career self-efficacy, intersectional identities, program evaluation tools, as well as program and course development and assessment.
Dr. Levenson has been a faculty member in Pediatric Endocrinology since 2016. Dr. Levenson is a pediatric endocrinologist and the Director of the UNC Fellowship Training Program for Pediatric Subspecialty Divisions, as well as the Program Director for the Pediatric Endocrinology Fellowship Training Program. Dr. Levenson received a BA in Biology from Barnard College/Columbia University in May 2001 and earned her medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine in June 2011. She completed her Pediatric Residency at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia in June 2009 and her fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology at Boston Children’s Hospital in June 2014.
Dr. Li is a psychiatrist and educator in the UNC School of Medicine. He completed his residency training at UNC and joined the faculty on graduation. He serves as the Associate Program Director for the Psychiatry Residency and also directs the Behavioral Health Course for UNC Physician Assistant students. He has a particular affinity for working with junior faculty and residents in preparing them for and retaining them in academic careers. He hopes to serve this specific niche in the Academy of Educators.
An explorer and thrill seeker at her core, Dr. McEntee decided to take a risk and join the University of Notre Dame’s ACE Program before entering medical school. Through this program, she taught at a secondary school in Oklahoma City for two years and earned a Master’s in Education from Notre Dame. She developed a passion for education, and when she entered a joint MD/MPH program at Tulane, she realized education would be an instrumental part of her medical career. The Dean of Students at Tulane further allowed her to take a year off from medical school between her first and second years to teach pedagogy at St. Joseph’s Teachers’ College in Moshi, Tanzania. She continues to be diligent in incorporating her educational passion into her day-to-day work as an Internal Medicine Hospitalist and Palliative Care/Hospice provider. Her educational interests continue to include working with the AOE to continue to help grow UNC’s commitment to developing faculty as educators, both through formal and informal processes, while also developing a more robust evaluation and assessment plan for all learners that focuses on competency-based assessment using Entrustable Professional Activities versus the traditional time constant curricula. In addition, she hopes to continue fostering and building a sense of community at UNC, which will further promote resilience and lifelong learning at all levels of education. She is proud to be a Tar Heel and is grateful for the opportunity to serve our community in this way.
Dr. Scherrer earned her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at the University of Mississippi, where she combined research focused on developing translational models to discover new treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders with training in higher education instruction. Dr. Scherrer then completed several postdoctoral fellowships at the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, the University of Florida, and Stanford University, where she broadened her research interests and studied substance abuse, pain, and the therapeutic effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for chronic pain conditions. Building on her previous instructional training, Dr. Scherrer then decided to focus on educative missions and taught Neuroscience and Psychology at Santa Clara University, before joining UNC-CH in 2020. As an educator, she aims to utilize her experiences in various academic and research settings to implement evidence-based teaching practices and innovative teaching methods that enhance student learning outcomes.
Dr. Spangler is passionate about providing high-quality, compassionate care to her patients and their families. She enjoys serving her patients in both the outpatient and inpatient settings as well as through aging research. She believes that she can deliver the best care to her patients by identifying barriers to care and finding solutions to improve care delivery. Her clinical approach fuels her primary research interests in identifying healthcare disparities among older adults in rural areas and the impact of these disparities on older adult frailty trajectories and caregiving resources. Dr. Spangler attended medical school and completed residency and fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.