Selective

Dates: August 27 , September 22, and November 19, 2020

Description: The faculty interest group sessions were one-hour long meetings to discuss various aspects of pharmacy faculty life and prepare one for a position in academia.

Reflection: The three sessions that I attended were extremely valuable. The first session reviewed general faculty life. The three pillars of academia (teaching, service, and scholarship) were discussed. A successful faculty member will need to exhibit all three. The presenter stressed the importance of establishing the expectations for a faculty member based upon each of the individual pillars at a particular institution. The final part of this session discussed how to make oneself marketable for a faculty position. Factors in marketability included diverse experiences, projects, and practice site experience. The second faculty interest group focused on the different types of faculty positions. The differences between tenure track and non-tenure track were discussed in detail. The presenter emphasized that tenure track tends to involve more research and service than non-tenure track. The discussion then focused on explaining the different levels of academic appointments from assistant professor to department chair. The importance of tenure and promotion guidelines was discussed. It is important to determine what scholarship and service will be needed in order to earn a promotion. Publishing requirements were also examined. In the final faculty interest group, the interview process was discussed. It was encouraged for the candidate to have questions for each session of the interview written on the agenda. It was also encouraged that one keep notes regarding topics and with whom they were discussed in order to personalize a thank you note. Asking a timeframe for a decision is appropriate and may help ease the anxiety while waiting. The discussion then focused on negotiations after the offer and resources to help during this process. All three faculty interest groups were a tremendous asset for one who is genuinely interested in academia.

Date: April 19, 2021

Description: Exam questions were written to accompany the Oral Pain and Discomfort lecture that I developed and presented in Self-Care Therapeutics. Exam item statistics were examined to determine the soundness of the questions.

Reflection: As an aspiring college of pharmacy faculty member, this was a valuable opportunity for me. I was able to use the lecture to emphasize the important points that would later be tested. Test questions were based upon the desired objectives. The questions performed well as students seemed to grasp the information. While most learners answered the questions correctly, differentiation and the point biserial was strong for several of my questions. The point biserial for my top performing questions was 0.5, 0.32, and 0.23. Some questions were perhaps too easy and the difficulty level could be increased by creating more viable and difficult distractors.

Date: March 25, 2021

Description: Exam item review sessions are a time when faculty members come together to assist in reviewing and improving exam questions prior to the exam being administered. It allows for fine tuning of the wording in order to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding the question.

Reflection: What I learned from this session was the importance of each word in an exam question. Words were added or removed based on the feedback from other faculty. The exam questions were trimmed to include the necessary information while miscellaneous material was excluded. The other impression that I came away with was the necessity of writing good distractors. The wrong answer choices needed to be similar in length and sentence structure as that of the right answer to avoid leading toward the correct answer. A final takeaway was in regards to a question that had performed poorly the previous year. We discussed the question, and the faculty members decided the question performed poorly due to the way the material had been taught, and not the question itself. It was interesting that the exam item review session was able to improve teaching methods even when the exam question itself was likely not the problem. I plan on using these lessons to further improve my own test question writing abilities.