EDUCATION COUNCIL REPORT Jim Dobbins, PhD, Fort Durham, NC

The Education Council recently held its annual retreat, and I am pleased to offer this brief summary of items looking back over the past year and ahead to high priority items for our efforts in the coming year.

We reviewed the key challenges and opportunities for each of our major committees and subcommittees, and I will mention just a few items of note for each group. The Public Education Committee is investing substantial effort in identifying common questions of interest regarding medical physics topics for the general public. Forty such questions have been identified and materials appropriate for a general audience will be produced and disseminated. The Medical Physics Education of Allied Health Professionals Committee is looking at ways to highlight to fellow societies the value provided by medical physicists, and is evaluating how to appropriately choose liaisons with those societies. The Committee on Medical Physicists as Educators is planning a summer workshop in the near future to revisit important contemporary approaches to education. The Medical Physics Education of Physicians Committee provided feedback to ACGME encouraging the involvement of medical physicists in residency training curricula, and has revamped the format of the Saturday physics sessions at RSNA. The Continuing Professional Development Committee is working on a business plan for improved utilization of our available online educational resources and is looking at ways to enhance the role of the MOC subcommittee beyond approving SAMs questions. The Education and Training of Medical Physicists Committee is looking at standardizing characteristics of DMP programs and is working on improving the funding support for summer undergraduate fellowships and diversity fellowships. The International Educational Activities Committee is working on prioritizing international education efforts and coordinating education and training with other organizations and societies. The Subcommittee on the Oversight of MedPhys Match is working on ways to incentivize programs to use the match and on identifying ways in which MedPhys Match and the common residency application process (MP-RAP) can be better integrated. In short, our many committees and subcommittees have accomplished a lot this past year and have identified important work for the year ahead.

We also continued our efforts at three of our major themes: (1) collecting data to assess the number of graduates and residents completing CAMPEP accredited programs relative to the perceived workforce demand, (2) determining how many additional residency slots are required, and (3) working on ways to address the educational implications of medical physics of the future.

We also discussed several specific items,including the evaluation of trial educational modules for use in radiation oncology training. A set of such modules has been produced and is being evaluated to see if there is sufficient interest and value to warrant the expense of producing additional ones. The Council also addressed a concern raised at the spring Board of Directors' meeting regarding a perception that some graduates of CAMPEP accredited graduate programs lack adequate preparation when applying to residency programs. We assigned individuals to collect data to explore this perception and how prevalent it might be and we discussed means to better harmonize expectations for clinical training between graduate programs and residency programs.

In summary, the retreat reminded us of the considerable work done by many in AAPM to support high standards of education and training across many types of learners. I am particularly grateful to the chairs and vice-chairs of our many committees and subcommittees who put in considerable effort to advance education in medical physics. We would welcome any thoughts or suggestions you would have to help us further enhance our value to AAPM and its members.

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