Francis Counselman, MD, (MD ’83, Emergency Medicine Residency ’86), the Chidester Endowed Chair of Emergency Medicine and Professor and Chair of Emergency Medicine, is one of five faculty members nationwide accepted into a leadership training program sponsored by the Council of Deans at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).
 
Richard Homan, MD, President and Provost of EVMS and Dean of the School of Medicine, nominated Dr. Counselman for the fellowship program that was established to enhance the development of future leaders in academic medicine.
 
“Given Dr. Counselman’s expertise as an educator at EVMS, his accomplishments at the American Board of Emergency Medicine for which he is a past President, his publications and his national reputation in emergency medicine, I spoke to him and felt he was perfect for this program,” Dr. Homan says.
 
During the year-long fellowship, Dr. Counselman will be mentored by deans at the University of Toledo and Virginia Commonwealth University. He will spend a week at each institution to better understand the operation of an academic health center and medical school. He also will participate in the AAMC’s Executive Development Seminar for Deans and will be required to complete a leadership project.
 
“I am incredibly honored that Dr. Homan nominated me for this amazing fellowship program,” Dr. Counselman says. “It will provide me the opportunity to learn a great deal about how medical schools and academic medical centers operate, on a scale that would otherwise not be possible. Rather than the micro scale of a departmental chair, I will experience how things operate on a macro scale, including finances, educational priorities and programs, research funding, graduate medical education and much more. If nothing else, I think this experience will make me a better chair of an academic department at EVMS.”
 
Dr. Counselman has held some of the most important roles in national medical organizations. For instance, as a past President of the American Board of Emergency Medicine, he led over 31,000 board-certified emergency physicians in the U.S. He also is a past President of the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Emergency Medicine.
 
Last year, the American College of Emergency Physicians presented him with the Award for Outstanding Contribution in Education, the organization’s highest honor for education and teaching.