Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Robert Frost from “The Road Not Taken”
In this newsletter, we announce the departure of two people who have given tirelessly to this institution, the work that it does, and the people who serve here. Drs. Cole Schulte and Kelly Mock have played critical roles in the success of the WashU Medicine education mission.
Cole has served in leadership roles in GME, admissions, finance, and, most recently as our Assistant Dean and Executive Director of Education Administration and Finance. In the latter, he built the infrastructure we have today in support of education and ensured the effective execution of our education mission across all programs. Kelly came to us from Maryville with deep knowledge of student experience and fundamentally shaped and then operationalized the Gateway Curriculum for the MD program. Neither of these amazing colleagues are replaceable, both will be deeply missed, and both have created a legacy, thereby ensuring that we will continue to thrive in their absence. In this excerpt, I will describe our transition plan and next steps. Please join us for a celebration in their honor on Wednesday September 3rd, 4-6PM in the FLTC Hearth.
Cole has a long history at WashU, having served in multiple roles. That knowledge and skill is not easy to replicate in one person. Therefore, we have chosen to elevate two incredibly capable people who have been working with Cole for the last couple of years and who are primed to assume these new roles. Amanda Thompson has accepted the position of Director of Education Administration. In this role, she will lead the execution of the Office of Education strategic priorities by partnering with senior leadership to operationalize vision into actionable administrative, workforce, and space plans. We deeply value staff leadership, specifically for the purpose of supporting the staff professional and career development. Amanda will be a partner for staff leaders to ensure that this commitment continues. Brooke Daley has accepted the role of Director of Education Finance. In this role, Brooke will provide strategic and operational leadership over financial planning, analysis, and business operations for the Office of Education to ensure transparent resource allocation, fiscal sustainability, and alignment of finances with institutional goals.
Leslie Blaylock has agreed to serve as the Interim Director of Curriculum while maintaining oversight of Program Evaluation and Continuous Quality Improvement (PECQI) and Medical Education Research and Evaluation. Leslie is a person of incredible skill, knowledge, and a quest for understanding. She is also highly collaborative. This change creates potential synergy between PECQI and Curriculum, which is the largest element of PECQI. It creates an opportunity for rethinking curricular work from implementation to evaluation and scholarship as a cohesive cycle. Curriculum is complex and busy, so holding leadership over all these domains may be too much. That is why “interim” — we do not know yet if it is too much to hold. We have wonderful managers and coordinators in the curriculum who will ensure that all continues to move smoothly and help us figure out the long-term plan.
Christina Twist has been promoted to Director over Admissions and Student Affairs. Christina has demonstrated amazing leadership as Director of Admissions. Brady Griffith continues as Associate Director of Student Affairs and we will seek to hire a new position, Associate Director of Admissions. This creates synergy between Admissions and Student Affairs in two primary spaces. One is the student life cycle — from admissions to graduation. The other is that these two teams hold the vast majority of our large medical student events. And so, instead of having multiple people planning large events, this creates one team that consistently plans and understands these events. This is how we were structured previously (pre-Gateway), with these two teams as a single unit, so in many ways, it is a return to a previous structure.
This is a lot of change. Maximizing stability was important to us in this decision-making process. Change is always hard, but it is also an opportunity to forge new synergies and grow deeper partnerships between units. There will be things we did not anticipate, and I am certain there will be bumps along the way. Please reach out when that inevitably happens. And this change is also an opportunity to relook at what we have built together and create something even better. Thank you to Cole and Kelly and thank you to all our staff, who every day make everything we do here in education possible.
With gratitude,
Eva