College of Medicine launches professional development podcast

A new podcast for faculty in the College of Medicine – Tucson will cover a variety of topics related to professional development and well-being, including time management, career advancement, personal finance and nutrition.

The "Faculty Learning EXchange" podcast, or "FLEXcast," was launched last month and is spearheaded by the college's Dean's Council on Faculty Affairs.

"The purpose of the podcast is to share ideas, experiences and knowledge from faculty for faculty," said Allie Min, the college's assistant dean for faculty development and one of the podcast's three co-hosts. "Communicating with each other is so difficult; we are all so stretched thin in our time and commitments, so we wanted to find a way to share information that faculty can access when they have the time and space to hear it."

While the podcast is geared toward faculty and staff in the College of Medicine – Tucson, Min said many of the topics will be broad enough to appeal to all University employees in various stages in their careers. 

The first episode, "Creating a Personal Vision," delved into how faculty can create and define their own personal vision and mission. The hosts and their guest – Conrad Clemens, senior associate dean of graduate medical education – reflected on their own careers and discussed an article that describes how faculty members in academic medicine can create personal mission statements. 

"There are so many professional development resources out there – in the literature and, most importantly, in the stories and experiences of our colleagues," Min said. "Hopefully, this will benefit individual faculty members as we all navigate our career paths and also foster a culture that values faculty development and well-being."

The podcast is co-hosted by Min, associate professor of family and community medicine Mari Ricker and assistant professor of emergency medicine Amber Rice. Each episode will last about 20 minutes and feature at least one guest from within or outside the college. Episodes conclude with a "FLEXfun" moment in which the hosts will chat about something outside of work, like a yoga class or book recommendation.  

The "FLEXcast" hosts hope to produce new episodes on a quarterly basis. The next episode, expected in February, will focus on time management in a busy work environment, Min said.

"Faculty here have clinical responsibilities, faculty and scholarly activities. They're publishing research and disseminating knowledge to the broader community. And they have their personal lives," Min said. "All our people are spread out at different campuses and different sites, and there is so much great information out there. We wanted to make it easy for people to access it in this podcast format, which is really popular right now."