Match Website Resource! Thank you Northwestern!

Northwestern University OSR is pleased to announce a new website dedicated to serving medical school students across the country. It is created by two of our MS4's who decided there was not a centralized place for match information. MatchRounds.com aims to bring everything needed for a successful match onto one site. You will find evidence based content, useful match tools such as an interactive timeline, acronym definitions, links to sites such as the NBME and ERAS, and an expense calculator created to estimate the costs of the entire process.

Perhaps the most important part of our site is the MyMatch area, where students can research programs and add them to their list. After choosing programs, the site allows the student to track their interview dates which appear on their timeline, and add thoughts about each program as the season progresses. We even have an interactive ranklist so students can rearrange their programs up until they enter them into the NRMP website. As students begin to use our site, they will have access to information such as which programs have released interview dates to other students and when invites were sent out, as well as aggregate rankings and comments from all of our users. Best of all, our website is completely free to use! Please visit us at www.matchrounds.com and see what we have to offer. Any feedback much appreciated!

Promo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY2392H43WQ

Tim Wang, MS3
AAMC OSR Representative
Northwestern University
t-wang@md.northwestern.edu

Student Interest Group in Medical Education. Start it at Downstate!

Are you interested in Medical Education?
Interested in Being a Student Leader?
Let BU help you bring SIGME to SUNY Downstate.

Read on . . .

The Student Interest Group in Medical Education is looking to expand to other medical schools that have students as passionate about medical education as our school does. The reason SIGME came into existence is because upon researching, we found that many schools lack a steadfast training program that provides exposure and hands on experience for students interested in pursuing a career as a medical educator. We formed a local group here at Boston University for the past year and based upon our success and the great response that we have received, we are now looking to expand to other schools. Here are some of the events that SIGME ran this past year:

• A kick off event with the Dean of the medical school presenting a talk entitled, "Why Choose a Career in Academic Medicine?" (flyer attached)
• A Teaching Workshop Series with events such as, "How to Integrate Technology into Medical Education," "Creating an Effective Teaching Environment," and "Assessing your Learner's Understanding"
• A Lecture Series with faculty showcasing the different roles and career paths of medical educators
• An Innovative Leader series with guest faculty highlighting new shapes and forms of curricula (flyer attached)

SIGME has been quite the success at BU. Over 80 people attended our last Innovative Leader Series talk, and our Lecture Series and Teaching Workshop Series continue to attract both students and veteran faculty. We have collaborated with other national student organizations at our school to organize events. In order to continually improve our student outreach, we've created surveys for internal review and have already used them for future event planning. We plan on presenting our work and the organization's structure at a medical education conference this June.

We have already heard from other schools interested in starting SIGME at their schools, and we would love to help you start a chapter at your school. Please contact me if you are interested.

Cheers,

Rounak Rawal

Boston University School of Medicine

rounak@bu.edu

Academic Medicine: Question of the Year

Academic Medicine’s editor-in-chief, Dr. Steven Kanter, poses a question each January in his editorial. The Question of the Year is a launching point for discussion and debate within the academic medicine community. Selected essays responding to the 2010 Question of the Year that are creative, imaginative, innovative, and feasible will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal. Essays must be a maximum of 750 words and contain no more than three references.

May 1st due date for essays: What are the most effective ways to make medical school tuition and fees free to students in exchange for public service?

For more information: http://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2010/01000/2010_Question_of_the_Year.1.aspx