Search

Medical education researchers are often subject to challenges that include lack of funding, collaborators, study subjects, and departmental support. The construct of a research lab provides a framework that can be employed to overcome these challenges and effectively support the work of medical education researchers; however, labs are relatively uncommon in the medical education field. Using case examples, the authors describe the organization and mission of medical education research labs contrasted with those of larger research team configurations, such as research centers, collaboratives, and networks. They discuss several key elements of education research labs: the importance of lab identity, the signaling effect of a lab designation, required infrastructure, and the training mission of a lab. The need for medical education researchers to be visionary and strategic when designing their labs is emphasized, start-up considerations and the likelihood of support for medical education labs is considered, and the degree to which department leaders should support such labs is questioned.

PURPOSE Medical school admissions committees are tasked with fulfilling the values of their institutions through careful recruitment. Making accurate predictions regarding enrollment behavior of admitted students is critical to intentionally formulating class composition and impacts long-term physician representation. The predictive accuracy and potential advantages of employing an enrollment predictive model in medical school admissions compared with expert human judgment have not been tested. METHOD The enrollment management-based predictive model previously generated using historical data was employed to provide a predicted enrollment percentage for each admitted student in the 2016-2017 application pool (N = 352). Concurrently, the human expert created a predicted enrollment percentage for each applicant while blinded to the values generated by the model. An absolute error for each applicant for both approaches was calculated. Statistical significance between approaches (expert vs. enrollment model) was assessed using t tests. RESULTS The enrollment management approach was noninferior to expert prediction in all cases (P < .05) with a superior correct classification rate (77.7% vs. 71.2%). When considering subgroup analyses for specific populations of potential importance in recruiting (underrepresented in medicine, female, and in-state applicants), the enrollment management predictions were statistically more accurate (P < .05). CONCLUSIONS Examining a single admitted class, the enrollment predictions using the enrollment management model were at least as accurate as the expert human estimates, and in specific populations of interest more accurate. This information can be readily exported for a real-time dashboard system to drive recruitment behaviors.

In higher education, enrollment management has been developed to accurately predict the likelihood of enrollment of admitted students. This allows evidence to dictate numbers of interviews scheduled, offers of admission, and financial aid package distribution. The applicability of enrollment management techniques for use in medical education was tested through creation of a predictive enrollment model at the University of Michigan Medical School (U-M).U-M and American Medical College Application Service data (2006-2014) were combined to create a database including applicant demographics, academic application scores, institutional financial aid offer, and choice of school attended. Binomial logistic regression and multinomial logistic regression models were estimated in order to study factors related to enrollment at the local institution versus elsewhere and to groupings of competing peer institutions. A predictive analytic "dashboard" was created for practical use.Both models were significant at P.001 and had similar predictive performance. In the binomial model female, underrepresented minority students, grade point average, Medical College Admission Test score, admissions committee desirability score, and most individual financial aid offers were significant (P.05). The significant covariates were similar in the multinomial model (excluding female) and provided separate likelihoods of students enrolling at different institutional types.An enrollment-management-based approach would allow medical schools to better manage the number of students they admit and target recruitment efforts to improve their likelihood of success. It also performs a key institutional research function for understanding failed recruitment of highly desirable candidates.

Senior leaders whose job it is to advance the work of public colleges and universities frequently position and leverage the work of their institutions as serving the public good. In doing so, there are frequent references made to the potential role of philanthropy in transforming society by focusing institutional attention on its most daunting challenges. This paper reflects on how transformational giving relates to the expansion of the public university mission and examines how engagement with society in addressing its problems creates new opportunities as well as challenges for giving relationships. It falls to university presidents and senior advancement leaders to pay close attention to the ways that significant gifts set universities on a course of change. The paper challenges traditional approaches to higher education's role in responding to complex societal issues, and helps to clarify two often-used but misunderstood concepts in the advancement profession—transformation and transaction.

The adaptive capacity of American higher education is rooted in 2 related factors: the ability of institutions to understand and operate within a shared environment with the communities they serve and leadership that is appropriate to a changing, increasingly boundary-free context. As a philanthropic organization that has provided support to both communities and higher education institutions for more than 60 years, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation has had a unique vantage point in observing the interactions between institutions and communities. Based on experiences from a wide range of projects sponsored by the Foundation, we suggest that such institutional-community collaboration is increasingly being demonstrated in institutional settings around the country and that the leadership practiced in such settings is a unique synthesis of that practiced in the contributing cultures: traditional institutional hierarchies and grassroots community-based organizations. Successful leaders approach the tasks of creating...

Executive Summary This paper describes "action research" strategies that were employed to assess the process and outcomes of leadership development programs for college students. These methodologies provided evidence that formal leadership development and education programs work on college campuses and that leadership can be taught. Successful outcomes for student participants, their institutions, and their communities were documented. The action research strategy involved multiple stakeholders and assisted in sustaining a social movement to continue leadership development programs on college campuses across the country.